A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  METAPHYSICS 


BY 
JOHN   ELOF   BOODIN 

PROFESSOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY,    CARLETON   COLLEGE 


Nefo  gotfc 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1916 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1916, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


S«t  up  and  clectrotyped.     Published  November,  1916. 


Nortoooft 
J.  8.  Cashing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


tto 

MY  FRIEND  AND  TEACHER 
JOSIAH  EOYCE 


349340 


PREFACE 

THIS  volume  on  metaphysics  is  the  sequel  of  a  volume  on  the 
theory  of  knowledge,  entitled  "  Truth  and  Reality,"  which  was 
published  in  1911.  The  two  volumes  furnish  a  survey  of  the 
field  of  general  philosophy  from  the  point  of  view  of  pragmatic 
realism.  This  attitude  which  the  author  has  been  champion- 
ing for  several  years  is  an  attempt  to  apply  scientific  method 
to  philosophic  problems.  The  term  pragmatic  is  used  in  the 
sense  which  was  first  advocated  by  C.  S.  Peirce,  and  which  is 
defined  by  the  author  in  his  own  terms  in  "Truth  and  Reality." 
As  applied  to  metaphysics  the  pragmatic  method  means  that 
we  must  judge  the  nature  of  reality,  in  its  various  grades  and 
complexities,  by  the  consequences  to  the  realization  of  human 
purposes,  instead  of  by  a  priori  assumptions.  Some  may  pre- 
fer the  older  adjectives  of  " empirical"  or  "critical";  but 
these  terms  seem  definitely  associated  with  certain  historical 
doctrines,  and  a  new  term  seems  to  be  preferable  in  designating 
the  scientific  tendency  of  to-day.  There  is  need  in  every  age 
of  retranslating  the  perennial  problems  of  philosophy  into  terms 
of  living  human  interest;  and  the  author  hopes  in  a  meas- 
ure to  further  this  movement  at  the  present  time  through  these 
volumes.  In  "A  Realistic  Universe"  the  author  has  tried  to 
make  vital  the  fundamental  problems  of  metaphysics  in  terms 
of  our  present  thought-world,  without  the  cant  of  the  past,  but 
with  a  deep  sense  of  indebtedness  to  the  masters  of  all  time. 
While  the  book  is  intended  primarily  for  the  philosophic  stu- 
dent, the  aim  has  been  to  make  the  style  as  clear  and  simple 
as  the  problems  would  permit.  In  the  use  of  scientific  material, 
an  effort  has  been  made  to  find  sources  which  would  be  intel- 
ligible to  the  layman  rather  than  to  make  an  appearance  of 
erudition.  Some  portions,  such  as  the  introductory  chapter 
and  part  five  on  Form,  may  be  of  special  interest  to  the  general 
reader. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

The  work  as  it  now  stands,  imperfect  as  it  may  be  in  execu- 
tion, has  had  a  long  history.  The  oldest  portion  is  that  re- 
lating to  time.  The  author's  theory  of  time  was  first  outlined 
in  a  paper  on  that  subject,  written  for  Professor  Royce's  Semi- 
nary in  1897-1898.  It  found  fuller  statement  in  his  doctor's 
thesis  on  "The  Concept  of  Time"  in  1899;  and  was  further 
expounded  in  a  monograph  entitled  "Time  and  Reality," 
published  in  the  Psychological  Review  monograph  series,  No. 
26,  in  1904.  A  brief  statement  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy, 
Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods  in  1905  has  been  partly  made 
use  .of  in  this  book.  As  there  has  been  no  material  change  in 
the  author's  attitude  since  the  publication  of  the  monograph, 
the  reader  may  be  referred  to  this  for  supplementary  treatment. 
Preliminary  studies  of  the  concepts  of  Space,  1906,  Con- 
sciousness, 1908,  and  Energy,  1908,  have  been  published  in 
the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  etc.  While  the  main  view-point  re- 
mains in  each  case,  the  material  has  been  thoroughly  restated 
and  should  be  judged  by  its  present  form.  The  same  applies 
to  the  article,  "The  Ought  and  Reality,"  which  appeared  in 
the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  1907,  and  which  in  the 
present  volume  has  been  restated  under  the  title  "Form  and 
the  Ought."  Other  papers  which  have  been  made  use  of,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  are:  "Do  Things  Exist?"  1912,  and  "In- 
dividual and  Social  Minds,"  1913,  from  the  Journal  of  Phi- 
losophy, etc.;  "Knowing  Things"  from  the  Philosophical  Re- 
view, 1911;  "Knowing  Selves,"  Psychological  Review,  1912; 
"The  Identity  of  the  Ideals"  from  the  International  Journal  of 
Ethics,  1912;  "A  Rehabilitation  of  Teleology,"  under  the 
title  of  "  Teleological  Idealism,"  from  the  Harvard  Theological 
Review,  1912;  "Pragmatic  Realism  —  the  Five  Attributes," 
under  the  title  of  "The  Five  Attributes"  from  Mind,  1913; 
and  "The  Divine  Fivefold  Truth"  from  the  Monist,  1911. 
The  author  wishes  to  express  his  appreciation  to  these  journals 
for  their  cooperation  and  encouragement,  which  have  meant  a 
great  deal  to  a  man  working  in  comparative  isolation.  The 
work,  however,  is  in  no  sense  a  compilation  of  articles,  but 
was  early  conceived  as  a  systematic  unity,  though  he  wished 
the  advantage  of  the  objectivity  and  time  perspective  furnished 
by  preliminary  publication,  as  well  as  the  incentive  that  comes 


PREFACE  IX 

from  feeling  a  part  of  the  social  consciousness  with  the  informal 
reactions  thus  made  possible.  In  this  connection,  he  wishes 
to  express  also  his  appreciation  to  the  Western  Philosophical 
Association,  before  which  many  of  the  preliminary  studies  were 
first  read. 

As  regards  his  indebtedness  to  other  workers  in  the  field,  the 
book  itself  will  have  to  bear  testimony.  Among  philosophers, 
his  indebtedness  is  greatest  to  the  standard  masters,  not  only 
because  of  their  intrinsic  merit,  but  because  they  have  been 
most  accessible.  In  all  things  speculative,  we  must  still  sit 
at  the  feet  of  the  Greek  masters.  His  first  systematic  training 
in  philosophy  the  author  received  under  the  tutelage  of  the 
great  German  idealists,  Kant,  Fichte,  and  Hegel,  thanks  to 
his  first  guide  in  philosophy,  James  Seth.  From  the  British 
empiricists  he  has  learned,  he  hopes,  a  homely  regard  for  the 
facts  of  experience.  Of  French  thinkers,  he  owes  most  to 
Poincare,  whose  phenomenal  grasp  of  science  and  transparent 
genius  place  him  in  a  class  by  himself  among  philosophers  of 
science.  Of  the  author's  immediate  environment,  he  hopes 
there  may  appear  in  this  work  something  of  the  inspiration 
of  the  great  leader  in  American  philosophy,  William  James, 
and  of  its  recent  laureate,  Josiah  Royce.  Nor  could  one 
escape  the  vitalizing  influence  in  our  country  of  its  great  teacher, 
John  Dewey,  and  the  Chicago  School.  When  the  author  was 
working  out  his  theory  of  time,  he  did  not  have  the  good  for- 
tune to  be  acquainted  with  the  brilliant  work  of  Bergson  on 
that  concept.  Not  even  William  James  seemed  conscious  of 
Bergson's  contribution  in  the  later  '90's.  While  the  author's 
theory  agrees  with  that  of  Bergson  in  aiming  to  establish  the 
reality  of  time,  both  the  fundamental  intuition  and  the  method 
are  different.  The  concept  as  set  forth  in  this  volume,  and  in 
previous  discussions,  must  be  regarded,  therefore,  as  a  different 
concept.  In  the  later  revision  of  the  work,  the  author  has 
been  stimulated  by  the  recent  realistic  discussions,  both  in  Great 
Britain  and  America.  Since  the  first  draft  of  this  work  was 
completed  in  1912,  and  most  of  it  antedates  the  movement  some- 
times called  "the  new  realism,"  perhaps  more  properly  called 
analytical  realism,  its  development  has  been  comparatively 
independent  of  this  movement,  and  has  little  in  common  with 


X  PREFACE 

it  either  in  spirit  or  method.  As  between  the  extreme  anti- 
intellectualism  of  Bergsonism,  and  the  extreme  intellectualism 
of  analytical  realism,  pragmatic  realism  steers  a  middle  course. 
While  maintaining,  as  against  analytical  realism,  that  reality 
is  more  than  a  congeries  of  abstract  logical  entities,  it  insists 
as  against  intuitionism  on  the  relevancy  of  thought  to  reality. 
Only  thus  could  thought  furnish  valid  leadings  in  our  practical 
and  theoretical  conduct.  This  attitude  is  in  line  with  com- 
mon sense  and  empirical  science. 

The  present  work  does  not  aim  to  be  a  compendium  of  cur- 
rent literature.  There  are  books  which  serve  this  purpose  in 
an  admirable  way.  It  must  be  judged  rather  as  a  personal 
reaction  to  the  permanent  problems  of  human  experience,  for, 
whether  we  will  it  or  no,  our  systems  are  after  all  personal  re- 
actions. If  they  are  sincere  and  thorough,  we  may  hope  that 
they  will  further  the  total  movement  of  truth.  The  time  seems 
peculiarly  auspicious  for  such  an  attempt  at  synthesis.  While 
there  has  been  much  of  suggestion  and  inspiration  in  recent 
discussion,  the  constructive  efforts  have  been  disappointing. 
This  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  magnitude  of  the  task.  In  the 
complexity  of  modern  thought  and  life,  we  cannot  perhaps  hope 
for  an  Aristotle.  What  could  once  be  accomplished  by  in- 
dividual genius,  must  now  be  carried  out  piecemeal  by  the 
interstimulation  and  supplementation  of  a  collective  mind. 
The  author  will  be  satisfied  if  he  can  count  as  even  an  infinites- 
imal part  in  this  infinite  task.  As  this  work  has  grown  up  for 
the  most  part  on  the  western  prairies,  may  it  reflect  the  homely 
sanity  of  the  great  West. 

NORTHPIELD,  MINNESOTA 
September  14,  1916 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


i. 


INTRODUCTION.    THE  MEANING  OF  METAPHYSICS 
PERSPECTIVE.    THE  DIVINE  FIVE-FOLD  TRUTH 


PAGE 

xiii-xxii 


3-12 


n. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 


PAET  I.    ENERGY  AND  THINGS 

BEING  —  MATTER  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 

PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM 

Do  THINGS  EXIST? 

KNOWING  THINGS  . 


15-32 
33-61 
62-73 
74-91 
KNOWING  THINGS  (Continued) 92-112 


PAET  II.     CONSCIOUSNESS   AND  MIND 

VII.    THE  CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS        ....  115-133 

VIII.     THE  CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  (Continued)   .        .  134-150 

IX.    KNOWING  MINDS 151-163 

X.     KNOWING  MINDS  (Continued) 164-190 

XI.    INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  MINDS  .  191-204 


PAET  III.     SPACE  AND   EEALITY 

XII.    PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND  GEOMETRIC  SPACE     .        .        .    207-224 
XIII.    THE  NATURE  OF  REAL  SPACE  225-247 


PAET  IV.     TIME  AND  EEALITY 


XIV.    THE  NATURE  OF  TIME 
XV.    TIME  AND  THE  PROBLEMATIC 

xi 


251-282 
283-303 


xii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAET  V.    FOEM   AND  EEALITY 

CHAPTBB 

XVI.    THE  IDENTITY  OF  THE  IDEALS         ....    307-325 

XVII.    FORM  AND  THE  OUGHT 326-359 

XVIII.    TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM 360-384 

XIX.    RETROSPECT  —  THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES     .        .        .    385-404 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  MEANING  OF  METAPHYSICS 

The  Place  of  Metaphysics.  —  In  this  age  of  narrow  special- 
ization and  absorbing  immediate  interests,  it  is  well  that  we 
should  try  to  recover  what  Plato  called  "  the  love  of  the  whole- 
ness of  things,  both  human  and  divine."  By  doing  so,  we  shall 

gain   greater   insight   into  our  special   problems  and   greatej; 

sanity  in  practical  life.     For  philosophy  is  merely  sustained 
thinking  about  the  things  that  are  of  vital  and  permanent  con- 
cern to  the  human  race  in  the  whirl  of  circumstance  in  which    \ 
we  find  ourselves. 

There  are  many  reasons  for  the  disrepute  into  which  the 
noblest  of  sciences  has  fallen  in  our  own  day.  One  of  these  is 
the  bias  of  words.  Metaphysics  has  been  confused  with  ob- 
scurantism and  occultism ;  and  professional  philosophers  are 
in  a  large  degree  to  blame  for  this.  They  have  been  victims 
of  a  traditional  vocabulary  which  once  was  significant  in  the 
history  of  thought,  but  which  has  ceased  to  be  relevant  to 
our  special  matrix  of  problems.  The  tendency  has  been  to 
substitute  counters  for  things,  antique  phrases  for  clear  and 
distinct  ideas.  Whenever  philosophy  has  been  vital,  it  has 
always  followed  close  upon  the  heels  of  science  and  human  in- 
terest. It  was  so  that  metaphysics  originated  as  a  science  in 
the  days  of  Aristotle.  It  is  so  that  it  has  maintained  itself 
ever  since,  whether  translated  into  the  theological  atmosphere 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  into  the  scientific  spirit  of  the  age  of 
Descartes  and  Locke.  To  be  vital  to-day,  metaphysics  must 
clarify  our  own  scientific  and  social  problems. 

Another  reason  is  to  be  found  in  our  narrow  emphasis  on  the 
practical.  The  most  dangerous  sophist  in  any  age,  as  Plato 
pointed  out,  is  the  public  sophist,  —  the  prevailing  emphasis 
of  the  social  mind.  To-day,  the  emphasis  is  on  immediate 
material  results  rather  than  on  the  calm  contemplation  of  the 

xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

meaning  of  things.  We  are  bent  on  producing  weather  rather 
than  on  examining  its  whither.  We  seem  to  have  raised  weather 
enough ;  and  if  we  persist  there  will  be  nothing  much  to  con- 
template but  ruins.  Bitter  after-reflection  may  teach  us  that 
the  question  is  not  merely  of  efficiency ;  but  to  what  end  ? 

Not  the  least  important  reason  is  the  slovenliness  and  laziness 
in  our  present  day  thinking,  which,  particularly  in  our  country, 
is  the  outcome  of  our  new  education.  This  is  rapidly  making 
this  generation  incapable  of  sustained  reflection.  Religion  has 
become  a  matter  of  sentimentalism  instead  of  the  systematic 
interpretation  that  characterized  the  Middle  Ages  and  the 
Reformation.  In  philosophy  we  have  substituted  intuition 
for  serious  reflection;  in  science,  narrow  specialization  for 
comprehensive  perspectives.  There  is  danger  that  we  may 
prove  unfit  for  the  task  of  meeting  the  great  social  problems  of 
the  day,  which  will  require  the  most  stubborn  sort  of  thought 
for  their  solution.  In  such  an  age,  we  need  to  hearken  back  to" 
Plato's  warning  that  things  can  only  be  set  right  when  philoso- 
phers are  kings;  and  philosophers  are  men  who  can  think  in 
terms  of  the  whole.  Indeed,  the  great  masters,  whether  in  the 
world  of  thought  or  of  action,  have  always  been  philosophers, 
even  if  they  have  not  always  been  conscious  of  the  fact. 

Though  we  may  neglect  metaphysics,  we  cannot  get  away 
from  it.  Being  of  the  very  nature  of  reflective  thought,  it  can 
say:  "When  me  you  fly,  I  am  the  wings."  Metaphysics,  as 
Comenius  pointed  out,  begins  at  the  mother's  knee.  "Thus, 
from  the  moment  he  begins  to  speak,  the  child  comes  to  know 
himself,  and  by  his  daily  experience,  certain  general  and  ab- 
stract expressions;  he  comes  to  comprehend  the  meaning  of 
the  words  something,  nothing,  thus,  otherwise,  where,  similar, 
different;  and  what  are  generalizations  and  the  categories 
expressed  by  these  words  but  the  rudiments  of  metaphysics?" 
We  are  thus  introduced  by  social  suggestion  to  the  distinctions 
of  things  and  qualities,  mind  and  matter,  cause  and  effect, 
space  and  time,  the  conscious  and  unconscious.  We  are  taught 
to  construct  a  scale  of  values  and  to  believe  in  a  world  of  ideals. 
Our  common  sense  and  science  are  shot  through  with  meta- 
physical concepts.  The  difference  between  such  metaphysics 
and  that  of  the  philosophic  thinker  lies  in  the  degree  of  thorough- 


INTRODUCTION  XV 

ness  with  which  we  pursue  such  matters.  It  is  clear  then  that 
metaphysics  has  a  permanent  claim  on  human  nature.  We 
may  well  agree  with  Aristotle:  "All  the  sciences  indeed  are 
more  necessary  than  this,  but  none  is  better." 

It  must  be  said,  too,  that  in  spite  of  the  shallowness  of  our 
thinking,  there  is,  in  our  age,  a  strong  feeling  for  ideals,  a  sound 
faith  in  melioration  which  persists  undismayed  in  the  baffling 
complexity  of  our  problems,  and  which  furnishes  the  one  ray 
of  hope  in  a  great  international  tragedy  —  a  promise  of  better 
things.  It  is  at  heart  an  idealistic  age  —  an  age  of  reconstruc- 
tion, of  profound  awakening  to  human  claims.  This  should 
give  philosophy  a  new  opportunity  in  the  building  out  of  the 
meaning  of  life. 

The  Presuppositions  of  Metaphysics. — A  few  years  ago  it  was 
fashionable  to  advertise  a  philosophy  without  presuppositions. 
This  would  indeed  be  radical  empiricism;  but  it  would  be 
suicidal  at  the  outset,  since  to  philosophize  we  must  think; 
and  thought  has  its  own  presuppositions  which  are  implied  in 
all  its  procedure,  whether  metaphysical,  or  more  narrowly 
scientific.  Metaphysics,  as  a  systematic  treatment  of  ex- 
perience, implies  logic.  It  assumes  that  there  are  valid  rules 
of  thought,  that  we  can  arrive  at  common  understandings. 

But  metaphysics,  as  a  final  evaluation  of  experience,  implies 
more  than  the  laws  of  thought.  It  implies  a  faith  in  their 
fitness  or  relevancy  to  our  world.  We  must  trust  the  instru- 
ment at  the  outset.  The  mute  faith  in  the  possibility  of  knowl- 
edge is  the  very  spring  of  the  process.  This  is  fundamentally 
an  attitude  of  the  will.  But  it  is  a  constructive  attitude,  and 
justifies  itself  in  the  progress  of  human  experience.  To  criti- 
cize the  instrument  in  the  abstract  is  at  best  a  futile  task. 
Some  philosophers  have  concluded,  from  certain  a  priori  con- 
siderations, that  thought  is  contradictory  or  inadequate.  Kant 
finds  it  suspicious  that  thought  is  equipped  with  certain  cate- 
gories at  the  outset.  These  seem  somehow  arbitrary;  they 
carry  on  their  face  no  guaranty  that  they  fit  into  the  empirical 
structure  of  things.  The  British  agnostics  have  noted  the 
relational  character  of  thought,  and  have  assumed  for  some 
traditional  or  temperamental  reason  that  reality  is  the  un- 
conditioned or  non-relational.  But  the  fruitfulness  of  such 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

thinkers  as  Kant  and  Spencer  lies,  not  in  their  a  priori  assump- 
tions, but  in  the  contribution  which  they  have  made  to  the 
correlation  of  the  values  of  experience  by  means  of  the  instru- 
ment which  they  mistrusted.  Somehow,  the  laws  of  thought 
must  be  the  laws  of  things  if  we  are  going  to  attempt  a  science 
of  reality.  Thought  and  things  are  part  of  one  evolving  matrix, 
and  cannot  ultimately  conflict. 

Hegel  here  shows  himself  a  saner  pragmatist.  The  cate- 
gories of  thought  must  be  tested  by  their  success  in  actual  use. 
If  the  values  of  experience  can  be  correlated  and  unified  in 
terms  of  the  categories  of  thought,  then  thought  requires  no 
other  credentials.  Its  validity  is  guaranteed  by  the  outcome, 
not  by  any  a  priori  test,  which  is  a  mere  hewing  in  vacuo. 
We  may  object  to  Hegel's  own  formulation  of  the  fundamental 
concepts;  we  may  not  share  his  confidence  in  the  abstractly 
logical  character  of  the  process  thus  to  be  manipulated.  His 
triadic  relations  may  appear  arbitrary  and  stilted.  His  sys- 
tem may  seem  too  much  like  the  staging  of  abstract  categories, 
and  as  lacking  real  movement  and  zest.  But  that,  after  all, 
is  because  he  fails  as  measured  in  terms  of  his  own  criterion  — 
the  success  of  thought  in  realizing  its  concrete  leading  from  part 
to  part,  from  corridor  to  corridor  within  the  complex  structure 
of  reality.  The  real  world  is  more  fluent  and  complex  and 
baffling  and  tragic  than  Hegel's  logic  with  all  its  interesting 
paradoxes  could  comprehend.  His  faith,  however,  is  invincible 
and  immortal.  Let  us  give  thought  a  fair  field  at  the  outset. 
Let  us  not  discredit  the  instrument  because  it  has  a  character 
of  its  own.  It  could  not  be  an  instrument  otherwise.  The 
universe  in  its  own  selective  movement  forged  it,  in  the  long 
ages,  for  just  such  a  world  as  ours  and  such  needs  as  ours.  The 
possibility  of  its  conquests  are  but  dimly  foreshadowed  as  yet. 

The  important  thing  is  that  our  concepts  shall  work;  that 
they  shall  blend  into  the  concrete  process  of  life  for  which  they 
are  made,  and  out  of  which  they  are  selected.  If  they  are 
relevant,  they  cannot  be  arbitrary,  —  not  "  appearances "  in 
the  sense  of  unreal,  even  though  they  are  at  best  abstract 
aspects  of  reality.  They  are  not  only  convenient  tools,  but 
part  and  parcel  of  the  world  which  they  enable  us  to  predict, 
use,  and  appreciate.  To  criticize  thought  independently  of  its 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

function  in  experience  is  as  senseless  as  would  be  a  baby's 
criticism  of  its  fitness  for  walking  by  an  abstract  examination 
of  its  anatomy.  The  impulse  to  walk  and  the  development 
of  the  anatomy  are  part  of  a  single  movement.  We  learn  to 
walk  by  following  the  impulse  to  walk ;  and  we  learn  the  nature 
of  things  by  repeated  efforts  to  use  the  instrument  of  thought. 
In  each  case,  the  implied  faith  is  justified  by  its  success. 

While  we  must  have  faith  in  the  relevancy  of  thought,  we 
must  not  prejudice  the  outcome  of  thought's  experiment  by 
our  assumptions.  Perhaps  it  is  not  true  that  the  object,  in 
order  to  make  a  difference  to  our  reflective  purposes,  must  it- 
self be  purposive  through  and  through.  Perhaps,  on  the  other 
hand,  reality  is  more  rational  than  our  ignorance  and  im- 
patience assumed.  Perhaps  there  are  no  simple  entities,  ex- 
cept as  we  so  treat  them  for  our  pragmatic  purposes.  Perhaps 
relations  cannot  be  resolved  into  either  the  internal  or  external 
type  exclusively.  Perhaps  our  values  may  be  guaranteed,  or 
at  any  rate  have  all  the  guarantee  they  do  have,  in  a  pluralistic 
and  temporal  world  as  well  as  in  an  absolutistic  and  eternal. 
At  any  rate  we  must  be  free  to  follow  the  leading  of  our  ex- 
periments. The  postulates  of  thought  and  the  postulate  of 
their  relevancy  seem  to  be  all  that  are  required  in  so  funda- 
mental an  inquiry.  And  these  too  must  be  justified  by  their 
success,  for  the  laws  of  thought  can  rise  to  clearness  and  dis- 
tinctness only  through  their  use. 

For  the  dogmatic  method,  too  often  applied  in  matters  of 
philosophy,  we  must  substitute  the  empirical  or  critical  method 
—  the  method  which  the  special  sciences  have  proved  so  fruit- 
ful in  their  own  domain.  It  is  not  the  province  of  metaphysics 
to  dictate  to  reality  what  it  must  be,  but  to  discover  its  funda- 
mental meaning.  It  is  only  when  pursued  in  this  spirit  that 
metaphysics  can  take  rank  as  a  science,  and,  at  least  in  its 
ideal,  as  the  science  of  sciences. 

THE  FUNCTION  OF  METAPHYSICS 

It  has  been  asserted  that  the  acceptance  of  philosophies  has 
nothing  to  do  with  their  truth,  but  with  their  congeniality  to 
people's  passions  and  prejudices.  This  seems  indeed  to  be 
true  to  a  large  extent  in  our  imperfect  and  uncertain  evolution, 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

where  our  mutual  blindness  plays  such  a  large  part  in  the 
acceptance  of  beliefs.  It  often  seems,  in  the  snail's  pace  of 
the  many,  that  ideas  only  gain  acceptance  after  they  are  an- 
tiquated and  then  as  obstacles  to  further  progress.  Thus 
Aristotle  is  accepted  as  a  dogma  to  defeat  the  progress  of 
modern  science.  It  would  seem  that  society,  by  the  very 
law  of  its  development,  is  bound  to  feed  upon  the  illusions  of 
yesterday.  Its  progress  is  ever  unwilling.  It  is  ever  moving 
with  its  back  to  the  light.  It  is  ever  making  martyrs  of  its 
prophets. 

In  thus  arraigning  society,  however,  we  are  losing  sight  of 
the  fact  that  human  nature  has  other  claims  to  satisfy  beside 
those  of  pure  truth.  The  primitive  law  of  society,  as  of  the 
individual,  is  self-preservation;  and  to  this  end  it  must  ever 
watch  with  jealous  care  the  introduction  of  new  gods.  In- 
dividual insight  is  ever  the  disturber  of  the  social  equilibrium, 
which  insists  on  standardized  beliefs.  The  human  Prometheus, 
therefore,  must  pay  the  penalty  of  his  profanity  in  stealing  fire 
from  heaven.  The  new  claims  must  be  put  upon  the  rack  and 
tried  out  with  reference  to  the  other  claims  of  human  nature, 
before  the  social  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  set  at  rest.  It 
is  useless  to  rail  against  this  law  of  nature.  We  are  all  part  of 
it.  Our  tolerance  extends  merely  to  the  trivial.  When  any 
profound  revolution  is  threatened,  we  agree  that  it  is  expedient 
that  one  man  suffer  rather  than  the  whole  people  perish. 

If  we  were  merely  logic  machines,  materialism  as  a  philoso- 
phy would  doubtless  triumph.  The  mechanical  view  has  cer- 
tainly the  advantage  of  simplicity.  But  the  simplest  theory 
is  not  necessarily  true.  A  theory  must  be  sufficient  as  well  as 
simple.  It  must  be  capable  of  harmonizing  all  the  claims. 
And  the  facts  may  be  richer  than  materialism,  with  its  mathe- 
matical models,  assumes.  The  universe  is  not  merely  a  place 
for  the  play  of  our  logical  faculty.  It  must  in  some  way  own 
our  other  ideal  demands.  Philosophies  must  do  justice  to 
our  whole  human  nature.  They  must  satisfy  our  emotional  , 
and  volitional  nature,  as  well  as  our  intellectual.  And  society 
has  always  regarded  logic  as  secondary  to  its  security  and 
happiness.  We  build  philosophies  and  air  castles  for  the 
spirit,  as  we  build  houses  for  the  body,  to  keep  out  the  blast 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

and  cold  of  an  unfriendly  and  fickle  cosmic  weather.  Philosophy 
has  its  value  in  appealing  to  our  sentiments  of  courage  and 
justice,  of  love  and  hope,  as  well  as  to  our  sense  for  fact.  When 
we  are  hit  by  the  blind  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  whether  the 
scourges  of  nature  in  the  form  of  pestilence  and  famine  or  the 
human  curses  of  envy,  hatred,  and  malice,  it  is  well  if  we  can 
say  with  Socrates :  "No  evil  can  happen  to  a  good  man  either 
in  life  or  after  death." 

And  so  it  is  that  the  agnostics  and  sceptics,  brilliant  though 
they  may  have  been,  and  though  the  advantage  of  logic  has 
often  been  on  their  side,  have  scarcely  counted  in  the  history 
of  society.  They  are  the  mere  curios  of  the  philosophical 
closet.  If  they  have  been  preserved,  it  has  been  only  through 
the  social  indignation  and  refutation  which  they  have  occa- 
sioned. The  effective  systems  of  philosophy  are  tremendous 
affirmations  of  faith  —  faith  in  human  society  and  its  under- 
lying ideals.  While  one  set  of  facts  may  apparently  be  as  true 
as  another,  some  facts  are  worth  more  than  others  in  the  economy 
of  human  life.  Since  truth  is  a  program  of  life,  such  emphases 
as  open  up  the  future,  as  furnish  the  largest  scope  of  activity, 
naturally  prevail  in  human  interest.  Hence,  idealism  will 
always  triumph  over  materialism,  even  though  the  latter  may 
be  more  economic ;  for  philosophy  exists  in  part  for  ennobling 
life,  for  enhancing  the  prospect,  not  merely  as  the  echo  of  a 
day  that  is  gone,  of  a  life's  sun  which  has  known  its  setting. 

Idealistic  systems  have,  one  and  all,  been  romantic  exaggera- 
tions. But  they  invite  to  effort  and  melioration,  to  faith  and 
hope:  "God's  in  his  heaven,  all's  well  with  the  world."  The 
fault  lies  in  us,  and  can  be  cured.  The  exaggeration  of  promise 
serves  as  a  compensation  for  the  seeming  bankruptcy  of  our 
temporal  life.  The  greater  the  odds,  the  greater  is  the  in- 
toxication of  hope  that  is  required  to  balance.  Hence  idealism 
has  flourished  best  in  the  face  of  national  crises  and  misfor- 
tunes, whether  in  an  Athens  stripped  of  its  power,  an  exiled 
Israel,  or  an  over-run  Germany.  It  is  then  that  the  kingdom- 
not-of-this-world  stands  out  in  strongest  relief.  The  roman- 
ticism of  youth  will  always  be  indispensable  for  overcoming 
the  disappointments  of  our  work-a-day  life.  The  faith  of  a 
Plato  that  only  the  Good  is  ultimately  real;  of  a  Kant  that 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

our  moral  consciousness  legislates  to  the  universe ;  of  a  Fichte 
that  the  world  of  sense,  stubborn  though  it  be,  is  but  the  stag- 
ing and  raw  material  for  realizing  the  moral  law;  of  a  Hegel 
that,  in  spite  of  all  seeming  blindness  and  chance,  the  world  is 
a  rational  whole ;  of  a  Royce  that  loyalty  to  the  ideal  is  the 
supreme  key  to  reality  —  all  these  are  noble  poems  which,  even 
by  their  exaggerations,  will  continue  to  inspire  the  race,  long 
after  the  more  rigid  systems  are  forgotten.  Friendship,  love, 
and  hope  require  idealization  to  live;  and  so  we  need  the  ex- 
aggeration of  the  romanticists.  Since  in  ultimate  things  we 
can  know  so  little  that  is  true,  human  nature  will  insist  on  hold- 
ing fast  to  that  which  seems  to  it  a  good,  trusting  that  in  the 
end  this  may  lead  it  nearer  to  the  true. 

Is  this  idealizing  function  of  human  nature  altogether  an 
illusion?  It  must  exist  for  a  use,  prominent  since  it  is  in  the 
evolution  and  welfare  of  man.  There  are  two  views  possible 
of  this  function.  We  may  regard  it  as  a  sort  of  protective 
covering  provided  by  nature  for  a  highly  sensitive  animal  against 
the  icy  blasts  of  circumstance,  to  shield  him  against  inevitable 
disappointments;  or  we  may  regard  it  as  the  small  voice  of 
the  universe,  however  imperfectly  understood.  In  the  former 
case,  it  becomes  indeed  an  unaccountable  illusion,  which  fails 
of  its  purpose  the  moment  man  ceases  to  be  the  dupe  of  na- 
ture's trick,  and  learns  the  profound  lesson  that  there  are  only 
atoms  and  the  void.  In  the  latter  case,  it  points  to  the  true 
vocation  of  man. 

Since  the  function  of  both  art  and  metaphysics  is  to  idealize 
life,  to  grasp  its  deeper  meaning,  the  relation  between  them  has 
often  been  emphasized.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  their 
motive  is  fundamentally  the  same,  viz.  the  discovery  of  har- 
mony. For  Poincare  it  is  "  harmony  expressed  by  mathematical 
laws.  It  is  this  harmony  then  which  is  the  sole  objective  reality, 
the  only  truth  we  can  attain ;  and  when  I  add  that  the  universal 
harmony  of  the  world  is  the  source  of  all  beauty,  it  will  be  under- 
stood what  price  we  should  attach  to  the  slow  and  difficult 
progress  which  little  by  little  enables  us  to  know  it  better."  1 
But  though  the  same  feeling  for  unity  and  fitness  underlies  both 
activities,  neither  the  method  nor  the  result  are  the  same. 

1  "  The  Value  of  Science,"  p.  14. 


INTRODUCTION  XXI 

We  cannot  agree  with  those  who  would  substitute  the  mystical 
and  artistic  approach  for  the  logical,  and  who  insist  that,  in 
order  really  to  know,  we  must  supersede  thought  by  intui- 
tion, logic  by  immediate  appreciation.  It  is  true  that  both  in 
art  and  metaphysics  there  must  be  analysis  of  the  primitive 
situation.  In  each  case,  these  aspects  must  be  supplemented 
with  the  concrete  fullness  of  experience  in  the  realized  purpose. 
I  But  in  art,  this  supplementation  must  take  place  by  means  of 
spontaneous  suggestion,  in  metaphysics  by  awake  and  articulate 
recognition.  In  the  former,  the  instrument  or.  leading  fuses 
with  the  totality  sought;  in  the  latter,  the  externality  of  the 
instrument  to  its  outcome  is  emphasized.  In  art,  the  selective 
activity  is  for  the  sake  of  permanent  objects  of  enjoyment; 
in  metaphysics,  for  the  sake  of  understanding.  Metaphysics 
is  science,  not  art. 

Problems  of  Metaphysics.  —  Metaphysics  has  been  spoken  of 
as  the  common  corridor  of  the  specific  types  of  idealizing  ac- 
tivity. As  a  corridor  it  serves  a  double  purpose.  It  opens  up 
into  the  special  compartments  of  truth.  It  implies,  and  fur- 
nishes the  inspiration  of,  the  special  sciences.  It  is  the  expres- 
sion of  the  underlying  faith  which  leads  man  to  seek  for  unity 
and  wholeness  in  our  seemingly  chaotic  world.  It  is  indeed  the 
oldest  of  the  sciences  —  the  mother  of  science.  Vlt  is  also  the 
terminus  and  clearing  house  of  the  specific  activities  for  truth. 
It  deals  with  the  common  and  overlapping  problems,  left  over 
by  the  special  sciences.  It  is  thus  the  heir  of  the  sciences.  It 
must  ever  be  present  as  a  regulative  ideal  in  all  our  search  for 
truth.  It  indicates  the  ultimate  direction  and  meaning  of  all 
our  ideal  striving.  Historically  and  logically,  therefore,  it  is 
the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  our  attempts  to  understand  and  ap- 
preciate our  world.  Like  a  perspective  from  some  high  moun- 
tain, it  necessarily  blurs  details  in  emphasizing  the  main  con- 
tours of  the  landscape.  At  best,  it  is  an  outlook  rather  than 
an  absolute  scheme,  a  temper  of  mind  rather  than  a  finished  re- 
sult. But  as  such,  it  corrects  our  partial  emphases  and  con- 
duces to  sanity.  Often  misunderstood,  it  cannot  be  avoided 
so  long  as  we  have  last  beliefs,  and  act  upon  them. 

It  has  been  customary  to  divide  the  problems  of  metaphysics 
into  two  types  —  ontology  and  cosmology.  Ontology  has 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

dealt  with  the  problem  of  being  or  stuff.  It  has  attempted  to 
answer  the  question  whether  reality  consists  of  such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  of,  or  the  seemingly  solid  stuff  of  sense  quali- 
ties, or  a  combination  of  the  two.  It  has  also  examined  into 
the  factual  relations  of  things,  such  as  causal,  spatial,  and  tem- 
poral relations.  Cosmology,  on  the  other  hand,  has  been  con- 
cerned with  the  ultimate  form,  purpose,  or  meaning  of  our  world, 
and  has  been  closely  allied  with  religion.  The  division  does 
not  seem  fortunate,  since  the  aspect  of  form  or  purpose  has  as 
real  an  existence  as  the  stuff  aspect  and  its  factual  relations. 
Hence  there  has  necessarily  been  a  great  deal  of  confusion  and 
overlapping . 

The  division  of  problems  in  this  book  is  based  upon  certain 
ultimate  and  generic  concepts,  viz.  energy,  consciousness,  space, 
time,  and  form.  Those  who  cling  to  the  traditional  division 
of  ontology  and  cosmology  may  find  solace  in  the  fact  that  the 
first  four  parts,  viz.  those  that  deal  with  energy,  consciousness, 
space,  and  time,  may  be  classed  under  the  traditional  heading 
of  ontology,  and  the  fifth  part,  which  deals  with  form,  under 
the  heading  of  cosmology.  The  old  heads,  however,  have 
little  pragmatic  value  and  should  give  way  to  a  more  scientific 
division  of  problems. 

I  have  departed  from  the  old  custom  of  giving  a  cut  and 
dried  summary  at  the  beginning.  Instead  of  that,  I  have 
tried  to  give  a  concrete  picture  of  the  problems  in  the  first 
chapter.  Philosophy  must  begin  with  intuition,  however 
severe  may  be  its  method.  It  is  hoped  that  this  imaginative 
statement  may  be  a  help  to  the  elementary  student,  even  though 
it  offend  the  pedant.  A  more  technical  summary  will  be  found 
in  the  last  chapter,  and  the  professional  philosopher  may  prefer 
to  turn  to  it  at  the  outset. 


A  EEALISTIC  UNIVEESE 


CHAPTER  I 
PERSPECTIVE:  THE  DIVINE  FIVE-FOLD  TRUTH 

IT  is  the  holy  stillness  of  night.  The  world  with  its  busy 
cares  is  asleep.  And  that  is  the  witching  hour  of  divine  philos- 
ophy. In  the  silence,  a  Spirit  comes  to  me  and  bids  me  write. 
Is  it  inspiration  ?  Or  is  it  the  fever  of  the  night's  vigil  ?  I  do 
not  know.  But,  somehow,  my  soul  seems  calm  and  I  seem  to 
see  in  a  sort  of  mystic  way  the  meaning  of  things  which  were 
dark  before.  At  least  I  will  obey  the  muse  to-night  and  trust 
in  the  leading  of  the  Spirit,  for  this  seems  like  no  human  in- 
sight. Tarry,  sweet  Muse.  The  night  is  young.  I  would 
fain  revel  in  glorious  discourse.  At  other  times  I  have  spoken 
through  the  long  processes  of  logic.  To-night,  I  would  fain 
speak  as  an  oracle. 

The  Divine  Truth  of  "Being" 

First  of  all,  there  comes  to  me  the  old  and  divine  truth  of 
"being"  —  not  static,  inert  "being,"  but  constellations  of 
energy,  conscious  and  unconscious,  interlocking  and  interact- 
ing in  space.  Worlds  rise  and  dissolve  like  smoke  wreaths, 
with  ever- varying  cadences.  Yet  through  all  the  shifting  forms 
laws  prevail ;  and  we  gnats  of  a  day,  that  are  borne  upon  this 
stream  of  change,  can,  to  a  degree,  forecast  the  future  from  the 
lingering  shadows  of  the  past.  In  each  stage  of  creative  trans- 
mutation, reality  speaks  to  those  that  can  understand :  "  that 
am  I."  In  spots,  and  for  a  cosmic  instant,  energy  collects  and 
condenses  into  material  centers.  These  centers,  through  their 
mysterious,  dynamic  threads  hang  together  as  a  whole.  You 
can  pass  on  the  light  beams  from  one  to  the  other,  even  to  the 
last.  They  dance  together  in  mathematical  rhythm  in  cos- 
mic space;  and,  in  the  infinite  ages  at  least,  carry  on  a  fair 
exchange  of  measure  for  measure.  And  part,  at  least,  have 
life  and  mind  and  can  catch  the  meaning  of  their  relationship. 

3 


4  ,  V          A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Spvnoza,  the  God-intoxicated,  had  a  vision  of  the  universe  as 
two  winding  corridors ;  each  variegated  fresco  of  one  is  imitated 
in  the  other,  for  the  order  of  thought  and  things  is  the  same. 
Each  voice  in  one  has  its  echo  in  the  other,  for  the  mind  is  the 
idea  of  the  body.  Proceed  as  you  may  through  the  infinite 
windings  of  one,  no  window  opens  into  the  other.  But  if  eye 
hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard,  and  if  it  hath  not  entered  into  the 
thought  of  man  that  there  is  another  half-world,  is  it  more  than 
the  shadow  of  man's  mind?  And  if  any  one  doubts  the  exist- 
ence of  the  other  corridor,  who  shall  prove  it?  Spinoza,  in 
the  passion  of  his  fancy,  supposed  that  if  things  exist,  and  if 
we  become  conscious  of  things,  then  things  must  be  repeated. 
But  things  are  just  such  as  we  must  meet  them  and  appreciate 
them  in  the  wide,  common  corridor  of  experience.  No  blind 
wall  separates  experience  from  the  world  of  its  interest  and 
love;  thoughts  and  things  are  part  of  one  divine  context. 
It  is  through  thoughts  that  we  can  use  things,  and  things 
become  significant  by  entering  into  the  context  of  thought. 
Thought  and  things  are  not  two  halls,  but  relationships  within 
one  dynamic  living  world.  There  is  only  one  window  to  the 
significance  of  the  world  of  things,  and  that  is  thought,  though 
things  may  hang  in  their  own  context,  without  being  thought. 

Whatever  varieties  of  energy  science  may  establish,  what- 
ever identities  and  equivalences  it  may  trace  in  the  flux  of 
process,  one  thing  is  sure,  mind  which  passes  in  survey  the 
motley  array  cannot  be  declared  unreal.  For  mind  alone  knows 
itself  first  hand  for  what  it  is,  is  aware  of  its  own  activity  and 
meaning.  Whether  we  find  it  convenient  to  make  mind  thin 
enough  to  cover  the  whole  extent  of  being,  or  must  recognize 
other  types  of  energy,  at  any  rate  mind  can  never  reason  it- 
self out  of  existence,  can  never  make  itself  an  accident  in  a 
world  which  sets  itself  the  vocation  to  understand  and  control. 
Mind  by  virtue  of  its  history  and  claims  must  be  fundamentally 
at  home  in  the  universe.  Its  purposes  alone  can  make  clear 
the  grades  and  complexities  of  "  being."  Mind  is  not  a  by- 
play but,  in  the  words  of  Plato,  "a  noble  and  commanding 
thing." 

But  "  being  "  is  not,  as  falsely  supposed  by  many  an  inspired 
genius,  the  only  door  to  reality.  It  has  been  the  habit  of  man 


PERSPECTIVE  :    THE   DIVINE  FIVE-FOLD  TRUTH      5 

thus  far  to  emphasize  some  aspects  and  read  out  other  aspects 
of  reality,  according  to  his  temperamental,  intellectual,  or  prac- 
tical bias.  In  this  he  has  usually  been  right  in  the  importance 
of  the  aspects  he  has  read  in,  and  wrong  in  the  aspects  he  has 
read  out.  Thus  the  Eleatics  of  all  time  are  quite  right,  that 
there  must  be  "being"  -stuff,  constancies,  thickness,  grist. 
But  because  there  must  be  thickness,  must  there  be  absolute 
thickness,  absolute  constancy?  Could  not  science  and  prac- 
tical life  get  on  with  relative  constancy?  So  far  as  our  ex- 
perience goes,  we  do  so  get  on ;  and  in  a  manner  find  our  way 
from  part  to  part  within  the  checkered  woof  of  reality. 

The  Divine  Truth  of  Time 

Instead  of  writing  a  poem  to  the  solid,  as  Parmenides  does, 
why  not  write  a  poem,  as  Heraclitus  does,  to  divine  flux,  with 
all  its  sadness  and  novelty?  Our  hopes  and  aspirations,  as 
well  as  our  doubts  and  fears,  are  built  upon  the  consciousness 
that  the  universe  is  not  absolutely  made,  but  in  the  making; 
that  the  future  may  divorce  the  present,  however  firmly  thought 
and  its  object  are  wedded  now  —  sometimes  by  altering  our 
attitudes,  when  the  facts  we  intend  seem  constant ;  sometimes 
by  altering  the  facts  in  conformity  with  our  more  constant 
ideals.  But  our  attitudes  are  facts,  too,  part  of  the  dance  of 
attention  in  the  ever-shifting  focus  of  object  and  interest  in 
the  drama  of  experience.  Like  a  magician,  time  converts  the 
death  of  winter  into  the  bloom  of  spring.  Like  dew  upon  the 
flowers,  it  makes  childhood  open  into  youth.  Like  summer  it 
comes  into  our  veins.  Like  a  lapwing  in  the  night,  time 
steals  upon  us  and  we  are  old.  Even  while  we  sleep  it  trans- 
forms our  values  and  purposes.  Like  moth  and  rust  it  creeps 
into  our  equations  and  facts.  However  viewed  it  is  true  that 
reality  is  vibrant,  that  it  is  ever  in  solution,  that  it  glows.  And 
no  static  view  can  ever  piece  together  this  motion  and  life  of 
real  process.  We  can  hold  only  part  of  reality  in  the  net  of 
our  concepts,  the  rest  trickles  through.  And  while  the  con- 
stant residue  is  more  important  for  science,  what  trickles  through 
may  be  the  more  characteristic  of  life. 

True,  we  cannot  prove  from  the  fact  of  change,  any  particular 
change  or  rate  of  change,  nor  deny  any  particular  constancy. 


6  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

The  processes  of  the  universe  travel  at  diverse  paces.  We  must 
take  the  substances  of  the  reality  which  time  transforms,  each 
after  its  kind.  But  we  can  prove  that  if  there  is  change,  there 
must  always  be  change.  For,  in  the  infinite  seons,  if  time  or 
change  were  finite,  it  must  have  run  its  course  untold  ages  ago. 
Change  must  be  taken  as  real  and  underived,  prior  to  all  our 
ideal  measurements,  if  it  exists  at  all.  This  change  value,  I  call 
time.  Let  the  paean  be  chanted  to  eternal  time  —  double- 
visaged  time,  with  hoar  frost  on  the  brow  looking  backward, 
and  the  fire  of  youth  in  the  face  looking  forward,  fading  Autumn 
and  budding  Spring  in  one. 

If  we  center  our  interest  on  the  flowing,  the  novel  and  the 
irreversible,  we  can  easily  fall  into  the  mood  that  only  the  flow 
is  real ;  that  the  flux  is  absolute  and  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  constancy,  or  truth  even  in  part;  that  the  transforming  of 
the  stuff  of  meanings  and  of  matters  is  the  real  and  that  uni- 
formities are  but  illusions.  With  Omar  Khayyam  we  may  come 
to  say : 

"  One  thing  at  least  is  certain —  This  life  flies : 
One  thing  is  certain  and  the  rest  is  Lies  ; 
The  flower  that  once  has  blown  forever  dies." 

Yes,  all  that  is  born  in  the  pangs  of  earthly  beauty  shall  fade 
and  die.  This  would  be  infinitely  sad,  if  spring  and  youth  were 
not  reborn  with  new  beauty  at  the  turn  of  the  year.  But 
while  "the  bird  is  on  the  wing,"  why  deny  such  seeming  perch- 
ings,  such  constancy  as  there  is,  such  prediction  as  experience 
proves?  While  the  hues  of  the  shadows  flit  and  blend  into 
each  other  on  the  face  of  the  mountain  in  a  thunderstorm,  still 
the  outlines  of  the  mountain  show  us  the  course  of  the  change ; 
and  while  the  torrent  hastens  to  the  sea,  the  scenery  of  the 
banks  helps  us  to  gauge  its  swiftness.  So  do  the  more  perma- 
nent fringes  of  meaning  and  tendency  help  us  to  take  stock  of 
the  fleeting  values  of  our  own  life. 

The  Divine  Truth  of  Space 

And  why  should  not  some  one  write  a  poem  to  the  void  — 
the  glorious  expanse  of  space?  For  what  a  congested  world 
this  would  be  if  it  were  condensed  into  a  mathematical  point 
—  no  looking  at  each  other,  no  embraces,  no  starry  heavens, 


PERSPECTIVE  :    THE   DIVINE   FIVE-FOLD  TRUTH      7 

no  gravitational  equipoises  of  swinging  masses,  no  differentia- 
tion of  individual  centers,  no  canvas  for  the  cosmic  artist  to 
spread  his  sunsets  on,  no  marshaling  of  the  ranks  of  tonal  har- 
monies as  a  result  of  this  absolute  condensation — all  for  want 
of  room.  If  you  have  space,  you  can  put  as  many  holes  into 
it  as  may  be  necessary,  shooting  it  through  with  energetic 
centers,  conscious  and  non-conscious.  You  can  stretch  your 
gravitational  threads,  you  can  pour  in  your  luminiferous  ether 
and  spread  out  your  electro-magnetic  field;  you  can  fill  it  as 
full  as  imagination  and  convenience  may  dictate.  On  its 
neutral  background  you  can  paint  as  great  a  variety  of  star 
patterns,  of  cosmic  tragedies  and  comedies,  as  the  necessities 
of  nature  and  the  artistic  genius  of  the  universe  may  prescribe. 

I  would  not  make  space  everything,  carving  a  world  out  of 
it  by  means  of  geometrical  figures  as  some  have  done.  Our 
imagination  at  least  is  too  finite  to  create  a  universe  out  of 
nothing,  whatever  an  infinite  mind  might  do.  But,  in  any 
case,  you  must  presuppose  your  space,  which  you  so  thanklessly 
ignore,  to  have  your  side-by-sideness  of  centers,  your  free 
mobility,  your  perfect  conductivity.  No  hindrances  there  to 
the  wheels  of  Charles's  Wain,  no  opaqueness  to  the  mercurial 
messengers  of  light,  —  only  sublime  distances  making  feeble 
man's  artificial  measures,  where  constellations  dart  through 
space  to  the  Pleiades.  Viewed  from  the  side  of  space,  your 
bodies  and  energies  become  interferences  —  departures  from 
the  pure  limit  with  which  we  start. 

It  is  true  that  in  the  poetry  of  science,  the  limitations  of 
space  are  being  annihilated  for  many  practical  purposes.  The 
electric  network  of  nerves  under  human  control  binds  humanity 
together  for  social  sympathy  and  cooperation  as  never  before. 
But  it  is  also  true  that  science  has  revealed  the  wonders  of 
space  to  us  in  a  new  light,  as  its  equations  of  distance,  both  in 
the  large  interstellar  world  and  in  the  minute  interactions  of 
things,  bankrupt  the  resources  of  our  imagination.  At  any 
rate,  so  long  as  distance  thwarts  the  will's  realization  in  the 
handclasp  of  loyal  men,  the  meeting  of  fond  lips,  and  the  em- 
brace of  loving  hearts,  space  must  be  recognized  as  real.  To 
divine,  neglected  space,  bespangled  with  many  a  star  for  diadem 
and  begirdled  with  lightning,  let  my  song  go  forth. 


8  A    REALISTIC    UNIVERSE 

The  Divine  Truth  of  Consciousness 

And  what  shall  I  say  of  consciousness,  illuminating  nature, 
the  manifold  world  of  process  and  its  flow?  To  be  sure,  it 
would  not  appear  except  for  the  complexity  of  the  world  of 
process  —  its  organs  and  contexts  of  relations.  But  they  in 
turn  would  have  no  significance  or  value  apart  from  the  divine 
light  of  consciousness.  It  was  a  noble  insight,  that  of  the 
Sankyah  philosophy  in  far-off  days  and  climes.  It  is  only  as 
nature  (Prakriti)  develops  senses  and  intellect  on  the  one 
hand,  to  match  the  motley  variety  of  the  world  on  the  other, 
that  consciousness  can  illume  the  world.  It  is  nature  that 
furnishes  the  subject  and  the  content  too.  Consciousness  is  a 
neutral  light.  It  adds  only  the  awareness.  It  cannot  be 
responsible  for  plurality  of  egos,  .any  more  than  for  unity,  as 
the  Sankyah  supposed.  Nor  does  nature  vanish  with  con- 
sciousness, but  with  it  becomes  significant  nature,  aware  of 
its  pulse  beats  and  its  destiny.  In  itself,  consciousness  has 
no  variety,  no  color,  no  direction.  But  with  it  comes  to  light 
the  color  and  variety  and  meaning  of  this  whole  checkered, 
flowing  world.  No  wonder  the  Sankyah  philosophers,  with 
their  longing  for  mystical  peace,  for  the  negation  of  strife  and 
variety,  centered  their  gaze  on  neutral  consciousness  and  al- 
lowed nature  to  vanish  with  the  abstraction  of  attention. 

How  long  before  the  mysterious  awakening ;  what  vicissitudes 
of  change;  what  migration  of  spirit  through  cosmic  spaces; 
what  dizzy  ages  of  evolution  of  organs  and  of  mind,  before  my 
spirit  saw  the  light,  who  can  tell?  Who  can  follow  the  journey 
of  mind  through  geologic  ages?  Who  knows  whether  it  is  a 
hardy  native  plant,  grown  up  in  the  cosmic  weather  of  our 
earth,  fraught  perhaps  with  unconscious  memory,  chastened 
through  suffering,  selected  by  nature's  breeding  from  the 
simpler  stages  of  life  below;  or  whether  it  is  a  divine  gift, 
groping  its  way  in  the  dark  to  its  father's  house?  But  when 
consciousness  does  illumine  the  patient  face  of  nature,  what 
beauty  of  significance  is  there  —  in  part  expressed ;  in  part 
vaguely  felt  and  only  half  understood.  What  opportunity  is 
there  for  sharing  in  the  (directive  creation  of  the  divine  destiny, 
which  nursed  us  to  this  end.  Elsewhere,  no  doubt,  the  light 


PERSPECTIVE  I    THE  DIVINE  FIVE-FOLD   TRUTH      9 

has  shone  before;  soon  the  light  here  shall  flicker  and  go  out 
again,  as  the  soul  goes  forth  to  its  new  mysterious  birth.  All 
this  —  the  before  and  after  —  is  hidden  in  the  night  of  our 
ignorance,  but  how  glorious  to  be  awake  just  now,  to  catch 
to-night  this  glimpse  of  the  eternal  procession  of  the  ages. 
Whatever  may  be  the  destiny  of  mind  in  the  cosmic  whirl  of 
change,  thank  God  for  this. 

When  I  take  my  journey  in  the  sea  of  energies,  midst  ethers 
and  star  dust,  perchance  through  skies  and  clouds  to  stars  un- 
known, perhaps  to  linger  here  midst  dance  of  circumstance, 
who  can  tell  when  and  how  I  shall  appear  ?  But  I  believe  that 
the  light  of  consciousness  shall  shine  for  me  again ;  that  I  shall 
see  anew  the  glory  of  God's  world ;  that  I  shall  feel  the  sym- 
pathetic touch  in  the  march  of  the  aeons  as  I  never  have  be- 
fore. If  so,  what  does  it  matter  how  long  I  sleep,  waiting  for 
the  call  of  God's  energies  to  the  beauteous  vision?  To  con- 
sciousness, lighting  the  world,  in  one  flash  of  interest  and  value 
bringing  groping  will  and  matter  face  to  face,  let  my  hymn  be 
sung. 

The  Divine  Truth  of  Form 

And,  then,  what  hymn  can  I  sing  worthy  of  the  glorious 
divinity  of  form?  For  who  would  want  a  chaos  of  moving 
pictures  like  the  nightmare  of  a  dream?  The  consciousness  of 
such  a  crazy  quilt  would  be  even  less  to  be  desired  than  the 
annihilation  of  Nirvana.  But  we  have  the  conviction  that 
some  facts  are  worth  more  than  others.  In  the  shifting  and 
relative  shapes  of  the  flux,  the  soul  comes  to  the  insight,  now 
and  then,  of  eternal  beauty.  Restless  sound  is  woven  into 
harmony,  the  chaos  of  color  into  divine  form  and  expression. 
The  world  of  things,  to  some  extent,  can  be  recreated  into  the 
world  of  ideals.  Who  can  wonder  that  Plato  found  the  idea 
of  form,  of  significant  unity,  diviner  than  all  the  flux  in  space 
and  would  allow  to  worth  alone  the  prize  of  being  ? 

Let  the  materialist  claim  that  beauty  is  a  physiological  re- 
lation ;  that  it  depends  on  a  certain  structure  and  its  motor 
reactions.  He  does  not  contradict  the  diviner  insight  that 
form  —  significant  relationship  —  is  an  original  and  underived 
aspect  of  reality.  True,  reality  must  prepare  the  spirit  for 


10  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

its  realization  and  appreciation  by  preparing  the  organism. 
Nature  must  construct  an  ^Eolian  harp  to  vibrate  with  the 
universe  of  tones.  It  must  invent  a  photochemic  film  to  give 
us  the  many  colored  rays  of  cosmic  light.  In  the  conflicts  of 
experience  it  must  bring  to  clearness  and  distinctness  the 
instinct  for  fitness  and  order.  Beauty  and  right  come  to  us 
first  as  intuitions,  before  we  can  understand  or  separate  the 
form  from  the  matter.  But  if  we  are  nurtured  in  the  lap  of 
nature  to  the  end  that  we  may  become  conscious  of  form  and 
beauty,  then  it  must  be  true  that  beauty  suffuses  the  whole  of 
things;  that  the  flux  has  worth  only  as  it  is  sifted  through 
eternal  form;  that  nature's  beauty  and,  still  better,  our  con- 
scious creation  of  beauty,  is  the  imitation  of  a  reality  of  which 
we  have  but  a  vague  intimation,  an  objective  world  of  form, 
interpenetrating  our  world  of  sense,  and,  in  the  long  series  of 
mutations  and  survivals  of  history,  constituting  our  human 
nature.  Looked  at  from  the  side  of  process,  nature  is  a  lavish 
creator,  and  some  of  its  gifts  also  have  form  as  read  or  ap- 
preciated by  human  nature.  This  is  not  mere  chance.  It  is 
part  of  the  selective  evolution  of  reality,  for  human  nature  is 
part  of  nature.  Beauty  is  but  nature  become  conscious  of  its 
formal  character  through  its  more  developed  organs  of  human 
nature.  Thus  do  nature  and  human  nature  conspire  to  produce 
the  sunset  and  the  symphony. 

In  human  nature,  nature  discovers  her  own  order,  recognizes 
the  rhythmic  pulse  beats  of  her  restless  activity.  Her  immanent 
tendencies  become  ideals,  her  direction  organized  purpose. 
And  this  human  nature,  while  it  lightens  to  an  extent  the  past, 
is  but  the  prophecy  as  yet  of  the  larger  overarching  and  over- 
lapping form  toward  which  the  universe  in  its  highest  reaches 
is  aiming  —  that  free  realization  of  an  ideal  where  work  and 
play  blend  in  the  fluent  and  joyous  activity  of  spirit. 

As  the  music  of  each  passing  moment  dies  into  the  recessional 
of  the  past,  one  thing  remains  amidst  the  changes  and  chances 
of  clashing  masses  and  souls  —  the  direction  of  the  process. 
That,  at  least,  is  absolute,  eternal  and  divine.  What  is  this 
direction?  Is  it  more  than  that  the  universe  in  patches  ex- 
presses ideals  and  so  becomes  immortalized  ?  Is  there  a  grand 
finale?  If  time  is  infinite,  this  should  have  come  to  pass  in- 


PERSPECTIVE:    THE  DIVINE  FIVE-FOLD  TRUTH     11 

finite  ages  ago.  Yet  for  a  superior  insight,  the  patchwork 
may  be  a  scheme.  That  it  is  so  remains  for  us  an  act  of  faith 
—  a  faith  that,  in  the  drift  of  cosmic  weather, 

"  Before  me,  even  as  behind, 
God  is,  and  all  is  well." 

This  faith  like  every  faith  must  be  justified  and  transformed 
in  terms  of  our  growing  experience.  For  on  the  shifting  sea  of 
life,  the  horizon  must  ever  move  forward  with  the  progress  of 
the  journey,  as  we  steer  towards  an  unknown  goal.  We  can 
catch  the  direction  in  part  only  by  looking  backward  at  the 
glittering  wake  of  the  past.  Unseen  insights,  new  adventures, 
unpredicted  accidents  confront  us  in  the  unknown.  But  the 
brave  souls  who  search  anxiously  for  the  leading  and  who  follow 
the  light  as  God  gives  them  to  see  the  light  shall  arrive.  For 
through  it  all,  we  believe,  there  runs  the  silver  thread  of  order, 
the  cheering  message  of  the  beyond. 

The  conclusion  of  my  poem,  which  I  can  but  feebly  express, 
shall  be  that  I  own  the  supplementing  concreteness,  the  real 
thickness  of  life  as  all  of  these,  interpenetrating  in  one  common 
world.  Reality  reveals  itself  in  five  different  ways.  It  has 
five  windows.  It  reveals  itself  to  our  purposive  endeavor  as  a 
world  of  restless  energies  with  their  relative  uniformities.  It 
reveals  itself  further  as  time,  which  in  the  flux  of  selves  and 
things  gives  the  lie  to  the  past  and  creates  for  the  soul  new 
mansions  of  meaning  and  value.  We  must  also  orient  our- 
selves to  space,  the  playground  of  energies  where  the  heavens 
spread  out  like  a  curtain  and  clouds  are  moved  back  and  forth 
as  draperies.  Under  certain  conditions  of  complexity  and  in- 
tensity, the  whole  is  lighted  up  by  consciousness;  and  lastly 
running  through  it  all  as  the  invisible  warp  of  the  many-colored 
woof  there  must  be  form  —  the  direction  which  our  finite  minds 
strive  to  unravel.  This  is  the  Divine  Fivefold  Truth  —  the 
five  doors  which  we  must  enter  if  we  would  bask  in  the  divine 
illuminating  wisdom. 

The  night  is  far  spent.  The  intoxication  of  soul  is  wearing 
off.  The  cock  crows,  announcing  that  matins  is  at  hand. 
The  goddess  of  drowsy  slumber  will  soon  lift  her  silver  veil 


12  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

from  off  the  naked  earth  and  depart.  The  bustling,  jostling, 
wakeful,  petty  cares  will  return  with  the  dawn.  I  thank  thee, 
Spirit,  for  divine  philosophy.  May  it  prove  sane  when  viewed 
in  the  glaring  light  of  day.  At  least  the  bliss  was  great,  while 
it  lasted.  And  now  into  Thy  care  I  commit  my  mind,  while  I, 
too,  join  the  unconscious  world  in  the  soft  arms  of  sleep. 


PART  I 
ENERGY  AND  THINGS 


CHAPTER  II 
BEING  —  MATTER  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 

THE  story  of  the  concept  of  being  is  a  long  one  and  consti- 
tutes pretty  much  the  whole  story  of  philosophy.  From  Thales 
down,  men  have  tried  to  simplify  our  world  by  reducing  it  to 
some  Urstoff,  some  simple  entity  or  entities  in  terms  of  which 
the  motley  variety  of  our  world  might  be  expressed  and  under- 
stood. It  might  be  water,  it  might  be  fire,  it  might  be  material 
atoms,  it  might  be  mind,  it  might  be  electricity,  it  might  be 
some  combination  of  elements.  In  any  case  the  human  mind 
has  felt  more  at  ease  in  the  world  when  it  has  thus  simplified 
it.  But  whatever  may  be  our  opinion  of  Urstoff,  upon  one 
thing  we  are  now  agreed,  that  experience  stuff,  as  revealed  in 
our  immediate  feelings  and  sensations,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
our  purposive  construction,  on  the  other,  must  be  the  starting 
point  of  all  our  investigations.  In  terms  of  this  we  must  differ- 
entiate and  express  the  problems  of  the  universe  in  so  far  as 
they  can  be  expressed.  But  is  reality  through  and  through 
experience? 

7s  Experience  Self-sufficient? 

It  has  been  maintained  from  time  to  time,  and  recently  by 
so  brilliant  an  advocate  as  William  James,  that  experience  is 
self-sufficient;  that  our  hypotheses  "lean  on  experience  but 
experience  leans  on  nothing  but  itself" ;  and  that  we  have  no 
need,  therefore,  of  any  reference  outside  of  experience.  While 
it  is  true  that  the  process  of  knowing  must  thus  lean  on  experi- 
ence, must  take  account  of  the  properties  and  relations,  the 
similarities  and  differences,  the  novelties  and  uniformities  as 
they  appear  from  moment  to  moment  in  the  stream  of  con- 
sciousness, this  does  not  seem  a  sufficient  account  of  reality 
as  a  whole.  If  we  examine  the  implications  of  experience 

15 


16  A    REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

more  closely,  we  shall  find  that  our  experience,  at  any  rate, 
seems  to  depend  in  many  ways  upon  an  extra-experiential  con- 
stitution. I  shall  mention  a  few  cases  in  which  experience,  in 
the  sense  of  conscious  experience,  implies  such  a  constitution. 

For  one  thing,  experience  does  not  account  for  its  own  con- 
tinuity, either  as  involved  in  intersubjective  relations  in  space 
or  in  the  bridging  over  from  moment  to  moment  in  time.  Let 
us  examine  the  former  type  of  continuity  first :  in  order  for 
two  egos  to  come  to  an  understanding  with  each  other,  or  to 
communicate  their  feelings  and  ideas  by  means  of  ''winged 
words,"  something  more  is  necessary  than  their  respective 
fields  of  consciousness.  Certain  instrumental  processes  must 
be  interpolated.  There  are  the  physiological  movements  pro- 
duced by  the  speaker,  the  air  waves  of  the  common  physical 
continuum  which  takes  up  these  movements,  and  finally  the 
end-organs  and  nervous  system,  reacting  to  these  stimuli. 
Now  these  intermediate  bearers  cannot  be  regarded  as  experi- 
ence in  their  own  right.  Even  the  immediatist,  unless  he  is  a 
solipsist,  would  have  to  admit  that  other  people's  immediacy 
is  not  his  immediacy,  but  is  communicated  by  means  of  inter- 
mediary processes.  This  would  be  true  even  on  a  telepathic 
hypothesis.  How  it  is  possible,  by  means  of  such  non-conscious 
intermediaries,  for  conscious  egos  to  meet  in  a  common  world, 
we  cannot  discuss  here.1 

In  the  second  place,  we  cannot  account  for  the  continuity  of 
experience  in  time,  any  more  than  in  space,  as  leaning  upon 
nothing  but  experience.  To  use  James's  illustration  :  Peter  and 
Paul  go  to  sleep  in  the  same  bed ;  and  while  not  conscious  in  the 
meantime,  so  far  as  evidence  proves,  each  one,  on  waking  up, 
is  immediately  aware  of  his  own  past,  and  one  does  not  get 
mixed  up  with  the  other.  Such  continuity,  bridging  over  the 
intervals  between  our  waking  moments,  must  require  some- 
thing besides  experience.  The  reason  that  experience  in  wak- 
ing connects  with  experience  before  going  to  sleep  is  that  both 
lean  for  records  upon  a  world  of  processes  which  is  not  experi- 
ential. The  machinery  of  association,  upon  which  the  living- 
over  of  experience  depends,  is  not  itself  experience.  The 
same  idea  might  be  illustrated  equally  well  with  reference  to 

1  See  Chapter  XI. 


BEING  — MATTER  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE  17 

social  experience  or  the  funded  knowledge  of  the  race.  Clay 
tablets,  constituting  libraries  of  ancient  lore,  have  been  un- 
earthed in  recent  years  in  the  Orient.  These  records  of  stored- 
up  mind  became  significant  anew  as  experience,  after  thou- 
sands of  years,  when  they  were  unearthed  and  deciphered  by 
recent  discoverers.  Perhaps  you  retort  that  they  were  possible 
experience  in  the  meantime.  But  what  does  possible  experi- 
ence mean  in  such  a  case  except  that  they  were  not  experience, 
until  they  became  continuous,  as  perception  and  interpreta- 
tion, with  human  beings  who  stumbled  upon  the  libraries? 
The  phrase  " possible  experience"  only  hides  the  problem;  and 
if  it  means  anything  when  pressed  home,  it  is  that  experience 
sometimes  leans  upon  processes  that  are  not  experience. 
Whether  within  individual  history,  therefore,  or  within  the 
history  of  the  race,  it  is  evident  that,  when  you  try  to  explain 
its  temporal  continuity,  experience  leans  upon  an  extra-experi- 
ential constitution. 

What  I  have  shown  with  reference  to  continuity  might  be 
shown  equally  well  with  reference  to  interest.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, a  case  of  primary  interest.  Why  do  brilliant  things, 
moving  things,  loud  things,  things  to  suck,  etc.,  fascinate  the 
infant?  Not  because  of  experience,  surely,  because  it  has  no 
past  experience  to  bank  on.  If  we  would  find  the  explanation 
for  such  interest,  we  must  go  back  to  biological  structure  and 
conative  dispositions,  not  to  psychological  association.  We 
sum  it  up  by  saying  that  the  child  and  the  chicken  are  so  con- 
stituted as  to  feel  this  way  in  the  presence  of  such  stimuli. 
Evidently  experience  leans  upon  what  is  not  experience,  as 
regards  primary  interest. 

If  you  take  into  account  the  more  general  demands  or  postu- 
lates that  underlie  psychological  activities,  they,  too,  seem  to 
carry  us  beyond  experience.  Why  is  consistency  pleasing  and 
contradiction  disagreeable  to  the  cultured  man?  Why  do 
certain  forms  and  combinations  of  colors  and  of  sounds  stimu- 
late him  to  appreciation  and  excite  the  feeling  for  the  beautiful  ? 
Why  do  certain  things  provoke  disgust  and  other  things  ap- 
proval? Partly,  no  doubt,  on  account  of  experience;  but  if 
certain  instinctive  qualifications  were  lacking,  or  if  the  instinc- 
tive constitution  were  different,  the  same  situations  might 


18  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

produce  entirely  opposite  feelings  on  the  part  of  individual 
experience.  In  order  to  understand  the  learning  process,  we 
must  take  account,  not  merely  of  experience,  but  of  capacity. 
No  facilities  for  education  can  overcome  the  native  limitations 
of  the  imbecile.  And  capacity  cannot,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
be  reduced  to  experience.  Imbeciles  sometimes  come  from 
highly  cultured  ancestry,  and  geniuses  from  a  background  of 
ignorant  but  honest  peasants. 

Not  only  is  the  woof  of  experience-in-the-making  thus  con- 
ditioned by  an  instinctive  warp  which  experience  presupposes, 
but  culture  and  meaning,  the  net  result  of  experience  and 
tendency,  are  funded  in  a  way  which,  to  a  large  extent  at  least, 
is  unavailable  as  experience.  Physiological  and  conative 
tendencies  come  to  do  the  work  of  memory.  It  is  precious 
little  that  a  man  out  of  college  twenty  years,  and  engaged  in 
new  pursuits,  can  recall  of  his  college  curriculum.  And  yet 
he  feels  differently  and  acts  differently  because  of  his  college 
course.  Here,  again,  in  the  very  definition  of  culture,  we 
come  upon  a  subtle  relation  to  reality  which  is  not  experience. 
The  ego,  therefore,  whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  not  merely  a 
"bundle  of  perceptions"  or  of  any  other  conscious  states. 
They  are  not  the  whole  story,  at  least. 

Another  road  might  have  been  chosen  to  show  the  insufficiency 
of  experience  as  an  account  of  reality.  If  we  take  the  imme- 
diatist  point  of  view,  what  reality  can  we  accord  to  nature? 
Is  nature  merely  a  "  bundle  of  perceptions  ?  "  We  have  already 
found  such  an  account  inadequate  to  the  ego ;  on  closer  scru- 
tiny we  shall  find  it  equally  inadequate  to  account  for  nature. 
If  we  insist  that  the  objects  of  nature  are  statable  merely  as 
our  perceptions,  we  must  be  prepared  to  answer  several  ques- 
tions. Does  reality  consist  merely  in  the  perceptual  differences 
that  things  do  make,  or  does  it  also  include  the  differences  which 
they  can  or  will  make  under  other  conditions  than  the  present  ? 
If  we  admit  will  and  can,  have  we  not  implied  a  larger  con- 
stitution than  experience?  And,  then,  what  about  the  con- 
stancies or  uniformities  in  our  perceptions,  upon  which  all  our 
expectancies  or  scientific  laws  are  based?  Is  the  recurrence 
of  perceptions  in  different  moments  of  the  temporal  stream, 
itself  brought  about  by  perception  ?  Is  it  part  of  perception 


BEING  — MATTER  AND   THE   ABSOLUTE  19 

that  perceptions  shall  repeat  themselves  in  certain  describable 
and  definite  ways?  But  if  perceptions  do  not  exist  in  the 
meantime,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  this  repetition  can  be  a  char- 
acter of  the  perceptions.  If  esse  is  per  dpi,  it  is  hard  to  see 
what  reality  there  can  be  when  there  is  no  per  dpi.  In  the 
prediction  of  an  eclipse  a  thousand  years  from  now,  or  the 
reading  of  an  eclipse  a  thousand  years  ago,  there  surely  is  no 
present  perception  of  the  fact ;  and  absent  perception  is  hardly 
perception.  If  there  can  be  such  a  thing,  then,  as  future 
perceptions  or  the  reading  off  of  past  perceptions,  experience 
must  lean  upon  a  non-experiential  constitution. 

This  is  not  the  whole  difficulty  of  the  phenomenalistic  theory 
of  nature.  A  further  problem  confronts  us.  Can  an  individual, 
whether  conscious  or  unconscious,  be  resolved  into  external 
relations?  Can  reality  be  regarded  as  having  merely  an  out- 
side and  no  inside?  By  thus  regarding  it  we  shall,  indeed, 
avoid  the  knotty  problem  of  the  " thing  itself";  but  is  our 
account  of  reality  fair  and  complete?  Is  reality  merely  what 
it  does,  in  the  sense  of  external  continuities,  waiving  for  the 
time  being  the  difficulty  of  what  it  may  do?  In  the  case  of 
one  sort  of  individual  at  least,  namely  the  purposive  ego,  we 
must  admit  that  he  is  not  merely  what  he  does,  not  merely 
the  perceptions  he  produces  in  us;  but  he  is  also  something 
on  his  own  account,  a  center  of  at  least  possible  appreciation 
and  willing.  This  is  the  real  core  of  the  ego  for  our  practical 
social  relations,  not  the  external  and  adventitious  ways  of  tak- 
ing him  —  not  his  side-by-sideness  or  likeness  to  other  in- 
dividuals, not  the  sensations  of  the  sight-touch-motor  complex. 
The  latter  for  the  deeper  purposes  of  our  personal  relations 
are  merely  signs  —  the  clothes,  or  part  of  them ;  and  a  self 
consisting  merely  of  clothes  would  be  a  funny  sort  of  an  in- 
dividual. The  ego,  to  use  a  good  Hegelian  distinction,  must 
be  something  fur  sich  and  not  merely  an  sick,  a  meaning  and 
value  on  its  own  account  as  well  as  something  for  others.  If 
only  purposive  beings  have  an  inside,  is  the  baby  merely  an 
outside,  merely  clothes?  It  seems  to  have  a  core  of  feelings 
of  its  own,  however  crude.  It  is  an  object  of  will  and  apprecia- 
tion, of  hope  and  love.  And  what  about  animals?  Are  they 
merely  our  perceptual  outside  with  no  inside?  No,  they,  too, 


20  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

seem  to  have  a  core  of  appetite  and  feeling  which  we  must 
acknowledge.  And  while  we  know  little  about  the  inner  life 
of  the  simpler  forms  of  nature,  at  least  they  are  not  merely 
fictions  of  ours.  Our  agreements  about  them  are  forced  agree- 
ments ;  they  are  not  created  by  convention ;  and  we  must  learn 
to  adjust  ourselves  to  these  simpler  realities  in  order  to  control 
them  and  to  realize  our  purposes.  If  we  would  keep  dry  in 
the  rain  storm  we  must  bring  our  umbrella  and  wraps  along. 
While  the  physical  object  can  to  a  degree  be  sensed,  while  it 
can  even  for  certain  purposes  be  stated  as  more  or  less  ''per- 
manent possibilities  of  sensation,"  its  existence  is  not  constituted 
by  our  sensations.  Approaching  the  problem  as  we  must  from 
the  point  of  view  of  our  active  purposes,  we  cannot  resolve 
reality,  whether  conscious  or  unconscious,  into  bundles  of  per- 
ception, or  into  experience  of  any  form,  altogether,  We  must 
interpolate,  somehow,  realities  which  are  not  immediate  ex- 
perience. 

Two  Hypotheses 

How  shall  we  conceive  this  larger  constitution?  Two  im- 
portant hypotheses  have  become  classical,  one  that  of  inde- 
pendent and  immutable  substances,  and  the  other  that  of  the 
absolute.  First,  a  word  as  regards  the  hypothesis  of  sub- 
stances. The  realistic  substances  may  be  material  or  spiritual ; 
they  may  be  the  extended,  impenetrable  atoms  of  Democritus 
or  the  Leibnizian  monads  —  non-extended,  windowless  soul- 
points,  representing  in  an  ascending  scale  of  clearness,  the 
entire  universe.  It  is  quite  wrong,  then,  to  accuse  the  older 
realism  of  being  materialistic.  On  the  other  hand,  the  sub- 
stances which  have  counted  in  science  have,  until  recent  times, 
at  least,  been  of  the  extended  or  material  order.  The  monads 
of  Leibniz  and  the  qualities  of  Herbart  have  not  counted  in  the 
development  of  science,  interesting  though  they  have  been  as 
metaphysical  curiosities.  The  atomic  theory  of  Democritus, 
adopted  by  modern  chemistry  and  made  exact  through  Ber- 
zelius's  conception  of  weight  proportions,  has,  on  account  of 
its  convenience  for  scientific  description,  come  to  stand  as  our 
ideal  of  atomic  realism. 

In  the  older  conception  of  atomic  realism,  the  geometric 


BEING  — MATTER  AND   THE  ABSOLUTE  21 

properties,  depending  upon  extension,  are  the  important  ones ; 
even  after  the  idea  of  energy,  in  the  sense  of  doing  work,  be- 
came a  permanent  concept  in  physical  science,  the  concept  of 
extension  was  long  allowed  to  rank  with  the  concept  of  energy. 
This  gives  rise  to  Herbert  Spencer's  antinomy  as  regards 
extension  and  force.  This  antinomy,  however,  is  losing  much 
of  its  relevancy  by  the  fact  that  extension  is  relegated  to  a 
secondary  place  in  the  scientific  conception  of  physical  nature. 

Some  philosophers  and  psychologists  maintained  long  ago 
that  extension  is  a  " confused  idea"  and  has  no  reality  outside 
of  individual  experience.  Berkeley  pointed  out,  with  his 
psychological  keenness,  that  the  size  of  a  thing  varies  with  the 
distance  and  that  the  form  varies  with  the  angle  of  perspective. 
He  concluded,  therefore,  that  matter,  being  thus  relative, 
could  not  be  objectively  real.  Modern  psychology,  with  less 
of  metaphysical  interest,  but  with  superior  experimental  tools, 
has  likewise  pointed  out  the  relative  character  of  extension. 
Thus  it  is  shown  that  the  extension  seems  longer  when  the 
intervening  space  is  filled  than  when  it  is  empty,  whether  you 
take  tactual  extension  or  visual  extension.  Where  the  area 
is  too  small  for  two  points  to  be  discriminated  as  two,  they 
still  furnish  the  sensation  of  a  bigger  point  than  either  of  the 
points  separately  applied.  When  a  given  number  of  points  are 
made  to  stimulate  the  skin  cells  or  the  retinal  cells  successively, 
the  extension  seems  larger  than  if  the  stimulation  is  simul- 
taneous. Even  as  regards  sound,  we  find  an  interesting  rela- 
tion between  the  rate  of  succession  of  physical  stimuli  and  the 
sense  of  volume.  Sounds  succeeding  each  other,  approximating 
the  rate  of  -^  of  a  second  cannot  be  discriminated  as  distinct 
sounds.  We  cannot  here  distinguish  even  between  the  dura- 
tion of  the  successive  and  the  simultaneous,  but  the  successive 
feel  bigger  than  the  simultaneous.1  Not  only  the  velocity  of 
certain  electric  currents,  therefore,  but  a  certain  velocity  of 
nerve  currents  produces  an  apparent  mass. 

Modern  physical  science,  however,  has  been  quite  untouched 
by  psychological  investigation.  What  physical  science  has 
been  concerned  with  has  not  been  perceptual  extension  with 
varying  conditions,  but  an  artificial  unit  of  extension  under 

i  See  Chapter  XIV,  p.  260. 


22  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

standard  conditions,  as,  for  example,  the  steel  yard  kept  at  a 
certain  temperature,  and  other  uniform  conditions,  in  the 
British  Museum.  As  long  as  this  conventional  unit  could  be 
applied  under  definite  conditions,  extension  still  maintained 
its  hold  as  an  ultimate  attribute  of  physical  reality.  I  say 
physical  reality  because  the  field  of  investigation,  where  ex- 
tensive units  have  been  applied,  has  been  narrowed  down  to 
this.  Philosophy  since  Descartes  has  recognized  that  there 
is  no  sense  in  speaking  of  an  extended  will.  Even  in  physical 
science,  however,  serious  doubts  have  arisen,  though  on  ex- 
perimental and  not  a  priori  grounds,  as  regards  the  absolute 
character  of  extension  and  even  of  weight.  What  has  given 
rise  to  this  doubt  in  recent  science  is  the  demonstration  that 
neither  extension  nor  weight  can  be  regarded  as  an  absolute 
constant,  and  that,  therefore,  recourse  must  be  had,  for  descrip- 
tive purposes,  to  a  more  ultimate  concept.  It  has  been  shown 
by  Lorentz  that  even  mechanical  mass  in  motion  must  vary 
with  the  electrodynamic  field,  and  so  is  not  constant.  Gravi- 
tational mass,  moreover,  does  not  seem  to  apply  with  equal 
force  to  all  energy ;  there  seems  to  be  little  relevancy  in  speak- 
ing of  electricity  as  having  gravitational  mass.1 

Recent  investigations  into  the  nature  of  electricity  have 
shown  that  mass  can  actually  be  produced  through  velocity. 
Kaufmann,  J.  J.  Thomson,  and  others  have  demonstrated 
"that  if  the  velocity  of  a  charged  body  is  comparable  with 
that  of  light,  the  mass  of  the  body  will  increase  with  the  veloc- 
ity." 2  And  not  only  that,  but  the  experiments  and  calcula- 
tions according  to  Thomson,  "  support  the  view  that  the  whole 
mass  of  these  electrified  particles  arises  from  their  charge."  3 

1  See  "Electricity,"  by  Gisbert  Kapp,  pp.  10  and  11. 

2  J.  J.  Thomson,  "Electricity  and  Matter,"  p.  34. 

3  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Thomson  in  more  recent  publications  has  modified 
his  view.  As  I  understand  it,  he  does  not  now  regard  it  proved  that  the  sum  of 
the  apparent  masses  of  the  negative  charges  equals  the  total  mass  of  the  atom. 
There  is  a  residuum  of  gravitational  mass  which  must  be  accounted  for  in  other 
ways.     This  is  now  a  matter  of  controversy.     But  in  any  case  the  Cartesian 
idea  of  atoms  as  rigid,  mathematical  figures  has  been  exploded.     Both  the  shape 
and  the  magnitude  of  the  atom  vary  with  the  velocity  and  the  magnetic  field. 
They  can  be  changed  by  pressure.     Energy,  not  mass,  becomes,  therefore, 
the  primary  physical  reality.     The  atom,  Thomson  has  shown,  can  be  stated 
as  the  sum  of  its  internal  energy  and  the  energy  of  translation. 


BEING  — MATTER  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE  23 

A  number  of  brilliant  physicists,  including  Rutherford,  Strutt, 
etc.,  take  the  view  that  the  atom  can  be  resolved  into  negative 
electric  charges  held  together  by  positive  electricity  spread 
over  a  wider  volume.  The  conclusion  of  these  investigations 
would  seem  to  be  that  there  is  "no  mass  other  than  electro- 
dynamic  inertia.  But  in  this  case,  the  mass  can  no  longer  be 
constant ;  it  augments  with  the  velocity  and  it  depends  on  the 
direction,  and  a  body  maintained  by  a  notable  velocity  will 
not  oppose  the  same  inertia  to  the  forces  which  tend  to  deflect 
it  from  its  route  as  to  those  which  tend  to  accelerate  or  to 
retard  its  progress."  1 

The  new  investigations,  so  far  from  disproving  the  descrip- 
tive significance  of  the  atom  as  it  has  figured  in  physical  science, 
have  on  the  contrary  furnished  experimental  corroboration  of 
its  existence  and  character.  Whether  the  hypothesis  of  posi- 
tive electricity  proves  to  be  more  than  speculative,  it  remains 
significant  that  the  mass  of  the  atom  as  now  measured  coin- 
cides with  the  mass  of  the  hydrogen  atom,  and  this  would  seem 
to  furnish  additional  evidence  for  the  hydrogen  atom  as  the 
atomic  unit.  There  is  little  in  common,  however,  between 
this  present  atomism  of  the  electrical  school  and  the  old  specu- 
lative atomism.  In  the  new  atomism,  energy  has  become  the 
chief  interest  rather  than  extension  or  weight,  and  it  has  been 
confidently  asserted  that  these  can  be  reduced  to  motion  and 
distance.  The  atom  is  no  longer  regarded  as  eternal,  impene- 
trable, and  indifferent,  but  as  the  storehouse  of  pent-up  energy 
of  enormous  quantity,  though,  as  in  the  case  of  radium,  it 
may  be  in  a  very  unstable  equilibrium.  Instead  of  impene- 
trable, inert  bits,  we  have  now  to  deal  with  electrical  charges 
of  a  positive  and  negative  kind,  although  it  may  still  be  conven- 
ient to  speak  in  terms  of  particles  or  corpuscles  as  vehicles  of 
charges.  Instead  of  the  mythological  " bonds"  of  an  older 
chemistry,  we  have  the  relation  of  positive  and  negative  charges 
to  each  other.  Atomic  relations  are  explained  by  the  fact 
that  atoms  can,  under  certain  conditions,  receive  or  expel 

1  H.  Poincare,  "The  Value  of  Science,"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Vol.  LXX, 
p.  349.  For  the  electrical  theory  of  matter  see  the  lucid  exposition  by  Hon. 
R.  J.  Strutt,  in  his  work  entitled  "  The  Becquerel  Bays  and  (the  Properties 
of  Radium,"  especially  pp.  184-193. 


24  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

particles,  in  the  former  case  increasing  their  negative,  in  the 
latter  their  positive,  charge.  By  the  conception  of  this  elec- 
trical atom  and  its  simpler  elements,  the  electrons,  which  bear 
very  much  the  same  relation  as  regards  distance  that  inter- 
stellar masses  bear  to  each  other,  the  electrical  school  strives 
to  find  a  common  denominator  which,  through  the  stability 
or  instability  of  the  structure,  can  account  for  the  scale  of 
physical  changes  from  the  ordinary  chemical  elements  to  the 
strange  behavior  of  radium.  And  it  has  even  been  suggested 
that  nerve  energy  and  mental  energy  are  "inductive"  relations 
and  can  be  reduced  to  electrical  phenomena.  Thus  this  school 
feels  that  at  last  the  old  dream  of  one  ultimate  Urstoff  has  been 
attained.  We  have,  instead  of  the  old  material  pluralism  of 
the  atoms  of  Democritus,  with  their  dependence  upon  me- 
chanical contact,  a  new  energetic  pluralism  which  is  capable 
of  constituting  its  own  continuum  over  intervening  distances 
by  means  of  energetic  charges,  whether  within  or  outside  the 
gross  atom  of  chemistry. 

Possibly  the  seventy  or  eighty  elements  of  modern  chemistry 
may  be  simplified  by  means  of  such  a  theory,  but  of  such  a 
simplification,  we  have  only  hints  at  present.  The  recurrent 
similarity  in  the  geometrical  groupings  which  free  magnets 
spontaneously  assume  in  an  electromagnetic  field  when  you 
increase  their  number,  as  shown  by  Mayer's  experiments,  fur- 
nishes a  direct  analogy  to  the  periodic  law  of  the  chemical 
elements  and  to  the  recurrent  characteristics  of  these  elements 
as  shown  by  spectral  analysis.  The  positive  or  negative 
chargeability  of  various  elements  shows  at  least  an  intimate 
connection  between  them  and  electrical  energy.  This  theory 
tries  with  wonderful  plausibility  to  account  alike  for  the  stability 
of  the  ordinary  chemical  elements  and  the  instability  of  the 
radio-active  substances;  but  its  most  interesting  aspect  to 
us  is  that,  like  the  earlier  metaphysical  theories  of  Leibniz  and 
Boscovich,  it  reduces  mass  to  energetic  terms.  Thus  in  mod- 
ern physical  science  we  have  passed  from  the  Cartesian  con- 
ceptual model  of  rigid  geometrical  figures  enclosing  extension, 
to  one  where  extension  is  regarded  as  a  function  of  energy. 

While  it  is  clear  that  the  concept  of  matter  must  henceforth 
occupy  a  secondary  place  to  that  of  energy,  it  would  be  a  mis- 


BEING  — MATTER   AND   THE   ABSOLUTE  25 

take  to  suppose  that  the  concept  of  matter  has  lost  its  useful- 
ness for  scientific  and  practical  prediction.  On  the  contrary 
it  has  come  to  have  more  definite  meaning.  What  has  been 
established  is  that  matter  must  be  explained  in  terms  of  energy 
rather  than  energy  in  terms  of  the  interactions  of  inert  matter. 
Matter  is  an  ensemble  of  properties  within  certain  energy 
systems,  as  taken  account  of  by  our  sight-touch-motor  per- 
ceptions. It  does  not,  however,  depend  for  its  existence  upon 
our  perception.  The  action  of  gravity  fortunately  is  the  same 
whether  we  attend  to  it  or  not.  So  are  the  size,  density,  and 
other  properties  of  things.  While,  furthermore,  the  properties 
of  matter  such  as  extension,  elasticity,  impenetrability,  chemical 
affinity,  weight,  etc.,  must  be  regarded  as  relative  to  energy 
systems,  they  are  none  the  less  real  and  predictable,  once  we 
define  our  energy  system.  The  empirical  generalizations  of 
physics  and  chemistry,  based  as  they  are  upon  observed  prop- 
erties, cannot  be  disturbed  by  revolutions  in  scientific  theory. 
The  laws  of  mechanics  are  being  applied  in  the  new  fields  of 
investigation.  Electrons  act  inversely  as  the  square  of  the 
distance,  according  to  the  parallelogram  of  forces,  etc.,  even 
though  it  seems  that  particles  at  rest  repel  each  other,  and 
particles  moving  side  by  side  attract.  While  the  electrical 
theory  has  tried  to  account  for  the  gravitation  mass  of  the 
atom  by  assuming  a  sphere  of  positive  electricity,  round  which 
the  negative  electrons  revolve,  no  evidence  exists  as  yet  for 
positive  electricity.  All  we  can  say  is  that  positive  electricity 
is  the  property  of  the  atom  when  negatively  charged  particles 
are  emitted.  And  if  it  were  proved  to  exist  as  an  entity,  it 
would  in  no  wise  affect  the  material  properties,  as  already 
known,  of  the  energy  system  which  we  call  the  atom.  Whether 
the  properties  we  associate  as  matter  exist  in  all  energy  systems 
can  only  be  determined  by  scientific  experience.  We  can  make 
no  a  priori  analytic  judgments  as  to  their  presence.  But 
even  if  they  don't,  that  does  not  invalidate  their  presence  and 
validity  within  energy  systems  where  they  are  known  to  exist. 
What  we  must  not  forget  is  that  matter  is  a  pragmatic  con- 
cept, and  the  ensemble  of  properties  which  constitute  matter, 
pragmatic  properties.  They  must  be  taken  for  what  they 
are  known-as  in  specific  energy  systems.  Extension  is,  for 


26  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

many  practical  purposes,  an  important  quality  of  our  material 
world.  It  is  presupposed  in  our  units  of  space  measurement. 
If  we  buy  a  suit  of  clothes,  we  want  the  right  dimensions.  If 
we  acquire  a  piece  of  land,  we  want  the  right  acreage.  That 
extension  is  not  a  property  in  the  abstract,  but  the  qualification 
of  an  energy  system,  depending  so  far  as  our  perception  of  it 
is  concerned,  upon  the  number  of  processes,  peripheral  and 
central,  which  are  stimulated ;  that  it  varies  with  motion  and 
pressure,  etc.,  does  not  make  it  any  less  real  within  the  condi- 
tions defined  by  experience.  Elasticity  on  any  theory  of  matter 
still  remains,  for  our  senses  and  physical  instruments,  a  property 
by  means  of  which  we  can  distinguish  some  bodies  which  tend 
to  resume  their  former  state  when  strain  is  released,  from 
bodies  which  do  not  possess  this  characteristic,  and  deal  with 
them  accordingly.  Solidity  is  still  the  inertia  opposed  to  the 
pressure  of  active  touch  or  other  pressures.  In  ordinary  ex- 
perience it  is  relative,  to  be  sure.  But  a  bar  of  steel  at  low 
temperature  is  practically  solid.  When  it  still  yields  to  enor- 
mous pressure,  as  Professor  Richards  has  shown,  this  doubtless 
indicates  the  overcoming  of  the  inertia  of  the  atomic  structure. 
But  there  would  seem  to  be  a  definite  limit,  whether  reached 
or  not,  where  bodies  are  incompressible.  Chemical  affinity 
still  remains  a  tendency  to  selective  behavior  among  some 
chemical  processes  under  certain  conditions  of  temperature, 
electrolysis,  etc.  The  property  of  weight  which,  with  its  im- 
plication of  other  properties  such  as  extension,  may  be  said  to 
be  the  pragmatic  equivalent  of  matter,  remains  fundamental 
for  certain  purposes  on  any  theory. 

In  each  case  of  these  and  other  properties,  the  property  must 
be  taken  as  relative  to  its  energy  context  and  as  varying  with 
this.  Take  weight  for  example.  This  is  clearly  a  property 
depending  upon  an  energetic  system,  little  though  we  know  about 
its  structure.  Weight  is  dependent  upon  a  relation  of  masses 
and  varies  inversely  as  the  square  of  their  distance.  It  is  a 
constant,  for  practical  purposes,  at  a  given  point  on  the  earth's 
surface  since  the  mass  of  the  earth  increases  but  slowly.  The 
weight  of  a  body,  under  ordinary  conditions  of  motion,  con- 
stitutes its  inertia,  and  when  we  speak  of  the  conservation  of 
matter,  we  mean  the  conservation  of  weight.  In  the  words 


BEING  — MATTER  AND   THE   ABSOLUTE  27 

of  Simon  Newcomb :  "  The  weight  of  a  body  at  a  given  place  is 
equally  a  measure  of  its  mass,  and  the  only  measure  that  can 
readily  be  applied  in  practice.  Experiment  shows  the  result 
of  the  two  measures  to  be  identical,  since  weight,  or  gravity, 
and  inertia  have  the  same  ratio  for  all  substances.  All  bodies 
retain  their  mass  unchanged,  whatever  transmutations  they 
may  undergo."  1  But  the  constancy  of  inertia  or  mass  is  in 
turn  relative  to  an  energetic  system.  In  the  case  of  particles, 
moving  with  a  velocity  approximating  light,  there  is  a  sudden 
increase  of  mass  due  to  motion,  beside  the  original  mass  of  the 
particles.  But  whether  we  are  dealing  with  inertia  as  gravita- 
tion mass  or  as  due  to  velocity,  in  any  case  inertia  is  an  energy 
category  and  eliminating  inertia  means  the  withdrawal  of 
energy  from  a  given  part  of  space.  What  has  been  abolished 
by  modern  science  is  not  matter  as  characteristic  of  certain 
energy  systems.  This  remains  a  valuable  instrument  of  pre- 
diction. What  has  been  banished  is  "inert  matter"  as  a  meta- 
physical entity. 

The  weakness  in  the  old  metaphysical  doctrine  of  realistic 
substances  is  that,  inasmuch  as  these  substances  are  independent 
and  indifferent  to  the  various  combinations  in  which  they 
enter,  they  cannot  account  for  the  apparent  processes.  The 
rigid  material  atoms  become  as  useless  to  account  for  the 
physical  changes  as  the  soul  substances  become  superfluous  in 
accounting  for  the  stream  of  conscious  processes.  The  sub- 
stances, in  other  words,  must  be  known  through  their  activity ; 
and,  therefore,  energy,  and  not  substance,  becomes  the  funda- 
mental thing;  substances  so-called  are  mere  abstractions  of 
the  relative  uniformities  and  constancies,  physical  and  psycho- 
logical, which  we  observe  in  the  stream  of  processes. 

The  other  classic  hypothesis  which  tries  to  furnish  a  setting 
for  our  finite  experience,  to  account  for  its  coming  and  going 
and  its  relativity,  is  that  of  absolute  idealism.  The  origin  of 
this  theory  is  easy  enough  to  trace.  It  grew  out  of  the  Kan- 
tian doctrine  of  the  unity  of  apperception.  This  doctrine 
merely  emphasizes  that,  in  order  to  be  known,  the  facts  must 
be  taken  into  the  system  of  experience  with  its  laws,  and  that 

1  Article  on  "  Matter,"  Baldwin's  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology. 


28  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

consequently  the  world  is  coherent  for  us  if  we  are  sane.  Kant, 
however,  added  the  gratuitous  assumption  that  the  categories 
of  our  mind  are  extraneous  to  reality  and  that,  therefore,  reality 
cannot  be  as  we  know  it.  We  know  it  as  a  dynamic  world 
where  the  properties  and  laws  which  pertain  to  the  specific 
activity  system  must  be  empirically  ascertained.  Kant  real- 
ized this,  but  imbued  as  he  was  with  the  old  metaphysics  of 
inert  substances,  he  insisted,  consistently  enough,  that  we 
could  not  possibly  know  things  as  they  are  in  themselves. 
This  would  evidently  have  to  be  by  some  passive  intuition 
which  should  not  involve  the  interaction  between  organism 
and  stimulus.  Kant's  common  sense  led  him  to  insist,  how- 
ever, that  we  should  not  waste  any  time  over  things  in  them- 
selves, and  that  for  practical  purposes,  we  are  no  worse  off 
for  our  ignorance  of  them,  since  we  are  concerned  only  with  the 
dynamic  world  as  it  appears  in  our  experience.  And  nobody 
could  quarrel  with  that. 

The  successors  of  Kant  accepted  his  thesis  that  reality  is 
only  accessible  as  it  figures  within  our  cognitive  system  with 
its  laws,  and  that  reality  for  us  is  unified  in  being  taken  up  into 
our  apperceptive  system  with  its  postulates.  They  made, 
however,  two  important  amendments.  One  is  a  legitimate 
one,  and  implied  in  common  sense,  viz.  that  we  must  assume 
that  reality  is  what  it  is  known-as,  or  as  Hegel  would  express 
it,  that  it  is  the  essence  which  appears.  They  thus  banished 
the  fictitious  thing-in-itself.  The  other  assumption,  which 
the  epistemological  idealists  have  added,  is  illegitimate  and 
rests  on  an  ambiguity  of  language.  It  amounts  to  saying  that 
because  reality  can  only  be  known  as  experienced,  therefore  it 
can  only  exist  as  experience.  This  had  been  expressed  before 
Kant  in  the  formula  of  Berkeley :  Esse  est  percipi,  or  to  be  real 
is  to  be  perceived.  But  for  the  post-Kantian  idealists  it  sig- 
nifies somewhat  more  than  that.  It  means  that  to  be  real  is 
to  be  apperceived  or  interpreted.  Since,  moreover,  this  inter- 
pretation, from  Kant  down,  is  recognized  to  be  social,  and  not 
merely  individual,  the  hypothesis  comes  to  mean  that  to  be 
real  is  to  exist  within  the  unity  of  social  interpretation.1  Since 

1  The  social  aspect  has  been  emphasized  by  Royce  in  "  The  Problem  of 
Christianity,"  Vol.  II. 


BEING  — MATTER  AND   THE   ABSOLUTE  29 

this,  too,  however,  is  relative,  —  has  a  finite  beginning  and  end 
in  time,  is  subject  to  error,  etc.,  —  to  be  real  must  mean  to 
exist  within  an  absolute  system  of  experience.  Thus  the 
unity  of  apperception  is  converted  into  a  cosmic  unity.  The 
emphasis  as  to  the  character  of  this  system  has  varied  with  the 
temperament  of  its  advocates.  Sometimes  it  is  the  logical 
character  that  is  emphasized,  as  with  Hegel;  sometimes  it 
is  the  ethical,  as  with  Fichte ;  sometimes  the  aesthetic  as  with 
Schiller,  but  in  any  case  the  assumption  is  implied  that  to 
be  real  is  to  be  part  of  a  system  of  conscious  experience. 

Now,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  contribution  of  absolute 
idealism  is  historically  important.  It  is  one  of  those  compensa- 
tory movements  by  which  history  strives  to  correct  itself.  The 
tendency  has  been  to  emphasize  too  much  the  material  systems 
of  reality,  and  to  regard  the  mental  systems  as  incidental.  The 
latter  must  be  recognized  to  be  at  least  as  real  as  the  former. 
Moreover,  it  is  true  that  the  values  of  our  world  can  only  exist 
within  mental  systems.  The  supreme  interest  of  man,  there- 
fore, should  be  man,  the  interpretation  of  his  ideals  and  in- 
stitutions. It  was  a  sound  instinct,  too,  that  insisted  that  the 
world  without,  —  the  larger  world  of  which  our  conscious 
moments  are  transient  phases,  —  can  be  no  less  reasonable 
than  the  world  within,  and  that  the  universe,  somehow,  must 
respect  our  higher  instincts  as  it  respects  our  lower.  The  faith 
that  the  laws  of  thought  are  the  laws  of  things  is  at  least  an 
implicit  postulate  of  all  science.  Else  the  thought  function 
would  be  as  futile  as  it  would  be  anomalous.  And  we  may 
assume  that  the  universe  has  an  equal  respect  for  other  funda- 
mental ideals  of  human  nature.  When,  moreover,  we  approach 
the  universe  in  its  wholeness,  we  may  regard  our  later  ideal 
systems  as  a  more  adequate  key  to  reality  than  the  simpler 
material  systems. 

But  this  does  not  prove  that  the  simpler  systems  are  not  real. 
Nor  does  it  prove  that  reality  cannot  exist  except  within  our 
apperception  systems,  be  they  individual  or  social,  be  they 
perceptual,  logical,  ethical,  or  aesthetic.  Certainly  so  far  as 
our  experience  is  concerned,  we  must  recognize  systems  which 
so  exist.  And  while  they  must  overlap  our  mental  systems  to 
be  significant,  it  is  equally  true  that  our  mental  systems  show 


30  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

numerous  dependencies  upon  them  in  the  economy  of  the  life 
process.  While,  again,  values  are  dependent  upon  mental 
systems,  or  the  various  conscious  types  of  selection  of  our 
socialized  individuals,  other  qualities  and  relations  need  not 
be  affected  by  being  taken  account  of.  We  discover  the  ratio 
of  gravitational  relations ;  we  do  not  make  the  fact  itself.  Nor 
is  it  clear  that  the  universe  as  a  whole  must  be  a  system  of 
conscious  experience.  Conscious  experience  may  well  be  a 
characteristic  of  our  peculiar  type  of  interaction  with  reality 
—  real  indeed  under  its  own  conditions,  but  not  necessarily 
applicable  to  reality  in  its  wholeness.  The  latter  may  have 
no  use  for  sensations  or  images  or  words,  and  yet  may  be  in- 
finitely wiser  than  our  cogitations.  The  absolute  of  the  epis- 
temological  idealists  is  after  all  an  anthropomorphic  projection. 
"So  the  Ethiopians  make  their  gods  black  and  snub-nosed ;  the 
Thracians  give  theirs  red  hair  and  blue  eyes."  1  And  while 
the  absolute  is  more  of  an  abstraction,  it  is  still  human  nature 
with  its  limitations  writ  large.  This  comes  out  with  somewhat 
bizarre  humor  in  the  assumption  by  each  absolute  idealist  that, 
in  unraveling  his  own  mental  processes  with  their  idiosyncra- 
sies, he  is  unraveling  the  absolute.  This  is  not  apt  to  increase 
our  respect  for  the  absolute,  but  we  may  entertain  our  doubts. 
As  an  ideal  of  knowledge,  we  do  indeed  aim  at  complete 
unification  of  the  facts  of  our  world.  Even  if  reality  in  its 
wholeness  cannot  be  shown  to  be  a  reflective  unity  of  experience, 
the  dream  of  science  must  be  to  weave  together  our  human 
facts  and  interests  into  such  a  system.  Absolute  idealism  has 
served  to  stimulate  interest  in  the  logical  implications  of  ex- 
perience. It  also  fulfills  a  religious  function  in  some  lives 
where  the  aesthetic  and  intellectual  cravings  are  more  prominent 
than  the  ethical  and  practical.  But  for  purposes  of  explana- 
tion, the  hypothesis  of  an  ontological  absolute  is  useless.  It 
is  not  at  all  clear  how  an  eternal  and  complete  system  of  ex- 
perience can  account  in  any  way  for  the  coming  and  going  of 
our  perceptions,  the  tragedies  and  successes  of  our  empirical 
world.  The  absolute  as  an  hypothesis  fails  as  completely, 
and  for  the  same  reason,  as  the  old  realistic  substances  in 
meeting  the  world  of  process.  It  is  barren  so  far  as  helping 

1  Xenophanes,  fr.  6a,  Burnet's  translation. 


BEING  — MATTER  AND   THE   ABSOLUTE  31 

us  to  make  any  predictions  in  our  changing  world ;  an  entity, 
which  is  supposed  to  explain  everything  beforehand,  explains 
nothing.  We  must  go  to  work,  therefore,  independently  of 
such  an  hypothesis,  aesthetically  satisfying  as  it  may  be  to 
some,  to  meet  the  problems  of  our  finite  world  of  change. 

Moreover,  as  Plato  long  ago  pointed  out  in  the  "  Parmenides," 
not  only  could  not  such  a  system  meet  the  problems  of  change, 
but  the  absolute  could  not  know  our  finite  world,  nor  could  we 
know  it.  That  we  could  not  know  it  must  seem  apparent 
enough,  for  if  we  knew  what  an  absolute  experience  is,  we  should 
already  possess  such  an  experience,  as,  indeed,  the  absolute 
idealists  have  not  been  too  modest  to  claim ;  but,  even  in  that 
case,  we,  after  all,  know  only  what  we  know.  The  absolute 
itself  becomes  merely  our  construction  —  our  attempt  to  inter- 
pret our  finite  experience.  We  have  failed  to  reach  the  per- 
manent and  eternal  for  which  the  absolute  was  supposed  to 
stand.  We  know  no  absolute  locus  in  the  world  of  experience. 
Our  absolutes  must  vary  with  the  growing  insight  of  the  in- 
dividual and  the  race,  with  the  evolutionary  process  of  human 
experience.  The  historic  relativity  of  the  idealistic  theories 
would  seem  to  indicate  that,  in  spite  of  the  confidence  of  such 
men  as  Hegel,  they  had  no  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the 
absolute  —  not  even  a  wink  or  tip.  If  we  cannot  know  the 
absolute,  neither  can  the  absolute  know  us.  It  could  not 
know  our  ignorance,  our  failures,  and  our  despairs  as  the 
tragic  facts  they  are  for  us.  We  exist,  not  merely  in  logical 
contexts,  but  in  contexts  of  emotion  and  action  and  must  be 
known  in  such  contexts.  The  very  fragmentariness  of  our 
human  experiences  from  the  absolute  point  of  view  would 
convert  our  despairs  into  hopes,  our  tragedies  into  comedies, 
and  our  failures  into  successes.  Such  an  absolute,  then,  even 
if  it  existed,  could  not  account  for  the  world  of  change,  with 
its  adjustments  and  maladjustments  and  its  different  levels 
of  appreciation.  Like  the  realistic  substances,  it  is  an  hyposta- 
tization  and  possesses  all  the  relativity  that  the  unity  of  finite 
human  experience,  which  created  it,  must  possess.  That 
which  explains  process  must  manifest  itself  in  the  process. 
The  meaning  we  can  snatch  from  the  flux  of  things  possesses, 
indeed,  a  certain  eternity  while  it  lasts.  It  aids  us  to  prepare 


32  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

for  the  future.  It  is  prophetic  of  the  larger  insight  and  the 
larger  experience  to  come.  But  as  for  absolute  permanence, 
we  know  this  even  less  in  the  field  of  human  experience  than 
in  the  case  of  chemical  elements.  The  old  static  view  of  being, 
therefore,  has  given  place  to  the  view  of  dynamic  processes, 
whether  as  regards  the  atoms  of  the  physical  sciences  or  the 
images  and  concepts  of  psychology.  Being  =  energy. 

We  have  tried,  so  far,  two  ways  of  supplementing  our  momen- 
tary individual  experiences  so  as  to  make  social  expectancy 
possible.  One  way  is  that  of  independent  substances  and  the 
other  that  of  the  idealistic  absolute.  Both  roads  have  led  to 
the  same  goal,  the  recognition  of  process  as  an  ultimate  fact. 
We  have  seen  that  "everlasting  fixtures,"  to  use  Plato's  phrase, 
cannot  account  for  our  world.  A  thing  must  be  known  through 
what  it  does  or  can  do ;  it  must  be  defined  through  its  dynamic 
relations.  Elastic  balls,  geometrical  figures,  and  other  con- 
ceptual entities  must  be  regarded  as,  at  most,  convenient  ab- 
stractions from  the  ever-restless  processes.  Although  this 
has  been  recognized  by  philosophers  in  various  ways,  it  is  to 
the  practical  working  necessities  of  science  from  Galileo  down 
that  we  owe  our  present  formulation  of  energy. 


CHAPTER  III 
PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM 
The  Nature  of  Energy 

THROUGH  a  chronic  tendency  of  the  human  mind,  due  to 
the  stereotyping  effect  of  language,  philosophers  have  sought 
for  energy  as  a  thing-in-itself.  It  has  long  been  maintained 
that  we  can  know  only  the  effects  of  energy,  and  the  conclusion 
has  been  drawn  that  energy  itself  is  inscrutable  and  unknow- 
able. If  effects  or  changes  are  merely  external  relations,  they 
will  indeed  show  us  nothing  about  things.  But  it  must  be 
clear  that  such  an  agnosticism  is  of  our  own  making.  Since 
the  fundamental  characteristic  of  energy  is  activity,  it  would 
seem  that  the  saner  attitude  is  that  of  common  sense  and  science, 
both  of  which  estimate  energy  by  what  it  does.  What  we 
know  about  our  world  in  our  experience  is  meager  enough,  but 
we  have  at  least  a  right  to  assume  that  our  fragmentary  evi- 
dence is  real  so  far  as  it  goes.  And  if  energy  reveals  itself 
in  certain  physical  and  psychological  changes,  these,  we  must 
assume,  indicate  the  nature  of  energy.  We  must  hold  to  the 
pragmatic  postulate  that  energy  is  what  it  does.  Any  other 
assumption  is  suicidal  at  the  outset. 

Others  have  insisted  that  we  have  immediate  and  intuitive 
evidence  of  the  nature  of  energy  in  our  sensations  of  strain, 
our  feeling  of  effort.  Now  this  is  true,  no  doubt,  to  the  extent 
that,  if  we  were  not  ourselves  active  beings,  we  should  not  be 
conscious  of  energy  in  nature.  The  fact  is  that  we  should  not 
be  conscious  at  all.  Psychological  analysis  shows  that  the 
feeling  of  effort  consists  in  certain  kinsesthetic  sensations  — 
sensations  of  muscular  tension  about  the  forehead  and  in  the 
throat,  of  labored  breathing,  etc.,  when  we  are  baffled  by  a 
problem.  But  these  sensations  are  not  mental  activity.  They 

33 


34  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

are  reflexes  merely,  —  symptoms  of  a  somewhat  unorganized 
or  obstructed  stage  of  activity.  They  are  not  concomitant 
to  all  our  activity.  When  the  particular  activity  becomes 
organized  and  proceeds  fluently  and  easily,  the  sensations  of 
strain  disappear.  But  the  activity  does  not  disappear;  on 
the  contrary  it  is  now  most  efficient. 

Science  has  followed  the  pragmatic  method  and  insisted  that 
energy  must  be  known  by  work  done  and  the  sort  of  work  that 
is  done.  It  is  true  that  in  the  minds  of  scientists  there  have 
lingered  reminiscences  of  an  antiquated  metaphysics,  of  an 
energy-in-itself,  of  occult  " forces,"  and  " latent"  energy.  But 
such  misconceptions  have  had  no  effect  on  the  empirical  results 
of  science.  These  have  to  do  with  predictions  of  behavior 
under  definite  conditions.  And  by  behavior  science  does  not 
mean  merely  a  sequence  of  perceptions.  The  assumption 
that  these  constitute  the  whole  story  is  a  metaphysical  inter- 
pretation of  science.  Of  course  we  must  know  reality  through 
our  perceptions,  i.e.  we  must  become  aware  of  its  changes. 
But  science  does  not  assume,  as  phenomenalism  does,  either 
that  we  are  dealing  only  with  perceptions  or  that  our  per- 
ceptions of  things  are  "faked"  manifestations  of  an  energy 
in  itself.  Our  perceptual  system  may  inform  us  of  what 
energy  does  in  systems  outside  of  the  cognitive  relation.  Our 
seeing  the  gunpowder,  and  the  spark  applied  to  it,  and  the 
explosion  with  its  results,  informs  us  of  what  is  happening  in 
our  environment.  It  is  not  our  perception  of  the  explosion 
which  makes  the  explosion  occur ;  the  work  done  by  the  energies 
involved  must  be  taken  account  of  in  their  own  context.  In 
other  words,  science  is  dealing  with  real  activities,  as  revealed 
in  various  contexts,  including  our  perceptual  context.  Whether 
again  we  measure  energy  in  foot  pounds,  the  work  necessary 
to  lift  a  pound  a  foot  in  a  second,  or  in  dynes,  the  work  nec- 
essary to  lift  a  gram  one  centimeter  in  a  second,  is  of  course 
purely  a  matter  of  practical  convenience,  and  has  no  philo- 
sophic interest. 

Work  and  inertia  are  merely  two  different  points  of  view, 
due  to  the  special  interest  for  the  time  being.  In  speaking 
of  work  we  emphasize  the  going  on  of  activity  in  connection 
with  a  series  or  direction  which  we  have  selected.  In  speaking 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  35 

of  inertia  or  mass,  we  emphasize  energy  which  must  be  balanced, 
overcome,  or  withdrawn.  To  start  a  body  moving  we  must 
overcome  its  inertia  or  its  energy  of  position.  Again,  we  can- 
not annihilate  the  energy  of  a  moving  body.  According  to 
Newton's  first  law,  if  a  certain  initial  energy  is  communicated 
to  a  body  from  a  definite  base,  it  will  move  uniformly  in  a 
straight  line  unless  interfered  with  by  other  energies.  Here 
energy  must  be  withdrawn  or  transformed  in  order  for  the 
body  to  stop  moving.  To  eliminate  interference,  again,  means 
the  withdrawal  of  energy.  In  our  practical  social  relations, 
we  use  inertia  in  a  similar  sense :  it  means  energy  which  must 
be  overcome  or  withdrawn.  We  must  overcome  people's 
opposition,  scruples,  or  habits.  We  may  be  reformers  trying 
to  overcome  people's  prejudices,  or  we  may  be  confidence  men 
trying  to  withdraw  people's  caution.  Work  and  inertia  are 
pragmatic  distinctions  depending  on  our  special  interests  in 
dealing  with  our  world.  They  hold  for  all  energies,  whether 
it  be  material  masses  in  space,  or  electric  currents,  or  social 
interactions.  We  can  see,  then,  that  inertia  is  a  universal 
characteristic  of  energy. 

The  simplest  unit  of  reality  is  an  energy  system.  Things 
do  not  have  properties  in  themselves;  they  possess  properties 
only  within  a  system,  and  such  properties  vary  with  the  condi- 
tions which  determine  the  system.  That  properties  exist  in 
the  abstract  is  one  of  the  last  superstitions  of  the  old  metaphys- 
ics. Take  weight,  for  example,  the  most  important  property 
of  mechanical  science.  Does  weight  exist  in  things  by  them- 
selves ?  We  know  that  the  weight  of  a  body  varies  at  different 
points  of  the  surface  of  the  earth.  It  is  a  function,  though  we 
do  not  know  how,  of  the  attraction  of  the  earth.  According 
to  Newton's  law,  bodies  attract  each  other  in  proportion  to  the 
mass,  and  inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance.  For  very 
large  distances,  we  know  now  that  gravitation  becomes  negli- 
gible ;  and  of  course  for  infinite  distance  it  becomes  zero.  A 
body  at  an  infinite  distance  from  other  bodies  would  have  no 
weight,  which  amounts  practically  to  the  same  as  saying  that 
bodies  by  themselves  would  have  no  weight.  If  you  say  that 
such  bodies  have  potential  weight,  that  is  the  same  as  saying 
that  they  do  have  weight  when  they  exist  in  connection  with 


36  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

a  certain  finite  system.  The  same  could  be  shown  for  other 
qualities.  Extension  is  a  property  things  have  for  us  in  a 
certain  perceptual  energy  system.  This  implies,  beside  certain 
external  energies,  a  certain  stimulation  of  the  cells  of  our  end- 
organs,  and  of  our  cerebrum.  The  number  of  physiological 
processes  stimulated  seems  an  important  condition,  though  the 
sequence  of  stimulations  must  also  be  taken  into  account.  In 
any  case,  extension  as  perceived  is  real  only  in  an  energy  sys- 
tem, and  varies  with  this.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  exten- 
sion of  things  with  reference  to  each  other.  It  varies  with 
motion,  temperature,  and  pressure.  In  so  far  as  we  apply  size 
and  weight  to  corpuscles  moving  with  the  velocity  of  light, 
both  properties  depend  largely,  if  not  altogether,  on  motion. 
Properties  have  no  meaning  for  science,  except  as  energy  deter- 
minations, characteristics  within  energy  systems.  And  this  is 
as  true  for  what  we  have  been  accustomed  to  call  primary 
qualities  as  for  the  so-called  secondary  qualities.  Science 
knows  nothing  about  absolute  properties. 

The  concept  of  energy  as  a  universal  generalization  is  a  thin 
concept.  But  any  predicate  of  the  whole  of  reality  must  be 
thin.  How  convenient  it  would  be  if  we  could  condense  real- 
ity altogether  into  one  formula,  requiring  no  supplementary 
definitions,  —  matter,  spirit,  electricity,  anything  that  could 
be  substituted  for  the  pluralistic  variety  of  our  world.  But 
leaving  a  priori  and  sentimental  preferences  out,  we  must  find 
what  experience  warrants'  us  in  saying  in  general  about  this 
variety.  And  the  predicate  of  energy  is  at  least  more  fruitful 
than  the  medieval,  lexicographical  predicate  of  being.  It 
furnishes  a  methodological  postulate  without  which  science  is 
impossible,  and  a  program  which  can  be  filled  out  by  scientific 
research.  This  methodological  advantage  of  the  concept  of 
energy  is  stated  clearly  in  Professor  More's  summary  of  Ran- 
kine,  the  founder  of  the  science  of  energetics :  "  Instead  of 
supposing  the  various  physical  phenomena  to  be  constituted, 
in  an  occult  way,  of  modifications  of  motion  and  force,  he  at- 
tempts to  frame  laws  which  shall  embrace  the  properties 
common  to  any  one  class.  He  finds  energy,  or  the  capacity  to 
effect  changes,  to  be  the  common  characteristic  of  the  various 
states  of  matter  to  which  the  several  branches  of  physics 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  37 

relate.  If  we  then  frame  general  laws  regarding  energy,  we 
shall  be  able  to  apply  them  with  appropriate  changes  to  every 
branch  of  physics.  In  all  cases  we  have  a  certain  quantity  of 
energy  active  in  a  definite  manner.  Our  aim  should  be  to 
find  by  experiment  the  properties  of  any  such  manifestation, 
and  to  combine  all  common  properties  by  general  mathematical 
laws."  l  This  principle  of  Rankine  can  be  extended,  we  be- 
lieve, to  the  whole  field  of  reality,  including  organic  and  psychic 
changes,  however  difficult  it  may  be  in  the  latter  cases  to  formu- 
late our  results  in  exact  mathematical  terms.  Wherever  you 
have  knowable  entities,  whatever  their  stuff  may  be,  there  you 
must  have  equivalencies  in  the  way  of  predictable  differences. 
Only  in  so  far  are  they  knowable.  We  must  know  reality  by 
the  differences  which  it  makes  to  our  practical  conduct. 

The  Postulates  of  Energy  Systems 

Our  energy  systems  are  cross  sections  of  reality  in  the  service 
of  our  special  purposes.  They  are  pragmatic,  but  that  does  not 
mean  that  they  are  unreal.  They  are  real  just  insofar  as  they 
are  based  upon  genuine  characteristics.  In  analyzing  any  such 
system  there  are  certain  general  postulates  holding  for  all 
systems :  there  must  be  certain  variables,  there  must  be  the 
form  or  organizing  relation  of  the  system,  and  there  must  be 
recurrence.  Recurrence  is  the  pragmatic  equivalent  of  what 
an  older  metaphysics  spoke  of  as  substance.  We  must  now 
try  to  illustrate  the  working  of  these  postulates  in  some  typical 
energy  systems. 

In  a  mechanical  system,  such  as  that  of  ordinary  kinetic 
energy,  we  have  three  independent  variables :  gravitation  mass, 
space  units,  and  temporal  units.  For  purposes  of  social 
description,  these  variables  must  be  standardized.  We  ascer- 
tain the  gravitation  mass  at  a  certain  location  on  the  earth's 
surface,  Paris  for  example.  We  standardize  our  space  units 
in  terms  of  some  common  measure,  kept  at  a  certain  constant 
temperature,  whether  it  be  the  steel  yard  in  London  or  the 
meter  in  Paris.  We  standardize  our  temporal  units  in  terms  of 
sidereal  time,  and  our  clocks  are  so  regulated.  These  units 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  July,  1909,  p.  785.  The  views  of  Rankine  are  to  be  found 
in  a  memoir  read  before  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Glasgow  in  1855. 


38  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

are  constant  for  practical  purposes,  but  they  are  at  best  prag- 
matic measures.  The  mass  of  the  earth,  sidereal  time,  and  our 
conventional  space  measures  are  all  undergoing  variations, 
but  so  long  as  they  serve  our  common  purposes,  we  can  ignore 
such  variations.  If  all  bodies  in  space  varied  correspondingly, 
owing  to  motion  or  electromagnetic  action,  we  should  not  be 
able  to  detect  it.  But  since  the  quantities  measured  and  the 
measure  would  vary  together,  we  should  not  be  practically 
affected  by  this  universal  relativity.  Furthermore,  our  simple 
mechanical  system  has  form.  It  is  uniquely  determined  by 
the  three  factors  mentioned,  viz.  gravitation,  space,  and  time 
units.  It  is  statable  in  terms  of  a  simple  formula :  J  MV2, 
where  M  stands  for  mass,  and  V  for  velocity.  And,  finally, 
while  we  live  in  a  world  of  constant  flux,  and  try  to  steer  our 
behavior  in  such  a  flux,  the  system  in  question  repeats  itself  in 
such  a  way  that  we  can  use  the  same  formula  again  and  again 
under  the  stated  conditions. 

In  a  more  complex  material  system,  such  as  a  chemical  system, 
we  can  analyze  the  system  into  the  same  elementary  postulates. 
If  we  wish  to  explain  the  compound,  water,  for  example,  we 
must  take  account  of  the  variables  —  the  properties  of  hydro- 
gen and  oxygen,  and  of  temperature.  We  state  the  organizing 
relation  as  H20,  the  combining  proportion  of  hydrogen  and 
oxygen.  And  once  we  have  standardized  the  factors,  we  are 
able  to  repeat  the  formula  so  long  as  the  conditions  on  our 
earth  remain  fairly  uniform,  i.e.  for  all  practical  purposes. 

In  analyzing  electrical  systems,  we  do  not  seem  to  be  able 
to  use  gravitation  mass  as  one  of  our  variables.  It  seems  to 
be  empirically  true  that  charging  a  metal  bar  with  any  amount 
of  electricity  does  not  alter  its  weight.  But  science  has  found 
other  variables  no  less  clear  and  definite.  We  know  electrical 
energy,  as  we  do  mechanical,  by  the  work  it  does.  "The 
presence  of  an  electric  current  is  recognized  by  three  qualities  or 
powers :  (1)  by  the  production  of  a  magnetic  field,  (2)  in  the 
case  of  conduction  currents,  by  the  production  of  heat  in  the 
conductor,  and  (3)  if  the  conductor  is  an  electrolyte  and  the 
current  unidirectional,  by  the  occurrence  of  chemical  decom- 
position in  it.  An  electric  current  may  also  be  regarded  as 
the  result  of  a  movement  of  electricity  across  each  section  of 


PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM  39 

the  current,  and  is  then  measured  by  the  quantity  conveyed 
per  unit  of  time."  * 

In  electrical  energy,  as  in  mechanical,  we  are  able  to  apply 
our  three  postulates.  We  have  certain  variables,  a  certain 
form  which  is  mathematically  statable,  and  we  have  recurrence. 
"A  current  flows  in  a  circuit  by  virtue  of  an  electromotive  force, 
and  the  numerical  relation  between  the  current  and  the  elec- 
tromotive force  is  determined  by  three  qualities  of  the  circuit 
called  respectively,  its  resistance,  inductance,  and  capacity."  2 
In  the  case  of  continuous,  unidirectional  conduction  currents, 
the  resistance  of  the  circuit  is  the  only  one  of  the  above  men- 
tioned qualities  of  which  we  need  to  take  account.  The  rela- 
tion of  electric  motion  to  this  is  formulated  as  Ohm's  law, 
"  which  states  that  the  numerical  value  of  the  current  is  ob- 
tained as  the  quotient  of  the  electromotive  force  by  a  certain 
constant  of  the  circuit  called  its  resistance,  which  is  a  function 
of  the  geometrical  form  of  the  circuit,  of  its  nature,  i.e.  material, 
and  of  its  temperature,  but  is  independent  of  the  electromotive 
force  or  current."  3  "  We  may  otherwise  define  the  resistance 
of  a  circuit  by  saying  that  it  is  that  physical  quality  of  it  in 
virtue  of  which  energy  is  dissipated  as  heat  in  the  circuit  when 
energy  flows  through  it."  4  When  we  deal  with  alternating 
or  periodic  currents  we  have  to  take  into  account  inductance 
as  well  as  resistance.  Inductance  "may  be  defined  as  that 
quality  in  virtue  of  which  energy  is  stored  up  in  connection 
with  the  circuit  in  a  magnetic  form.  It  can  be  experimentally 
shown  that  a  current  cannot  be  created  instantaneously  in  a 
circuit  by  any  finite  electromotive  force,  and  that  when  once 
created,  it  cannot  be  annihilated  instantaneously.  The  circuit 
possesses  a  quality  analogous  to  the  inertia  of  matter.  If  a 
current,  i,  is  flowing  in  a  circuit  at  any  moment,  the  energy 
stored  in  connection  with  the  circuit  is  measured  by  \  Li2,  where 
L,  the  inductance  of  the  current,  is  related  to  the  current  in  the 
same  manner  as  the  quantity  called  the  mass  of  a  body  is  re- 
lated to  the  velocity  in  the  expression  for  the  ordinary  kinetic 
energy,  viz.  J  MV2.  The  rate  at  which  this  conserved  energy 

1  Article,  "Electrokinetics,"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  llth  ed.,  Vol.  IX, 
p.  211. 

2  Ibid.  p.  211.  » Ibid.  p.  211.  <  Ibid.  p.  212. 


40  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

varies  with  the  current  is  called  the  '  electrokinetic  momentum ' 
of  this  circuit  (  =  Li).  Physically  interpreted  this  quantity  sig- 
nifies the  number  of  lines  of  magnetic  flux  due  to  the  current  itself 
which  are  self -linked  with  its  own  circuit." x  In  electrical  energy, 
therefore,  as  in  ordinary  mechanical  energy,  we  can  define  the 
variables  involved  in  its  activity,  we  can  state  its  organizing  rela- 
tion in  terms  of  simple  mathematical  formulae,  and  we  can  predict 
the  future  for  practical  purposes  under  the  stated  conditions. 

If,  again,  we  take  an  organic  system,  we  find  that  we  can  deal 
with  this  on  the  basis  of  the  same  postulates.  Here  too  we 
have  our  variables,  our  organizing  relation,  and  recurrence. 
Life,  complex  as  it  is,  is  after  all,  a  chemical  compound. 
"  Protoplasm,  the  living  material,  contains  only  a  few  elements, 
all  of  which  are  extremely  common,  and  none  of  which  is  pe- 
culiar to  it.  These  elements,  however,  form  compounds  char- 
acteristic of  living  substance  and  for  the  most  part  peculiar 
to  it."  Of  such  elements,  the  most  significant  is  proteid,  con- 
sisting of  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  nitrogen,  and  sulphur. 
Among  other  elements  are  such  organic  compounds  as  fats, 
carbohydrates,  and  various  inorganic  substances  such  as  salts 
and  water.  "We  attain,  therefore,  our  first  generalized  de- 
scription of  life  as  the  property,  or  peculiar  quality  of  a  sub- 
stance composed  of  none  but  the  more  common  elements,  but 
of  these  elements  grouped  in  various  ways  to  form  compounds 
ranging  from  proteid,  the  most  complex  of  known  substances, 
to  the  simplest  salts.  The  living  substance,  moreover,  has 
its  mixture  of  elaborate  and  simple  compounds  associated  in 
a  fashion  that  is  peculiar.  .  .  .  Life  is  not  a  sum  of  the  quali- 
ties of  the  chemical  elements  contained  in  protoplasm,  but  a 
function  first  of  the  peculiar  architecture  of  the  mixture,  and 
then  of  the  higher  complexity  of  the  compounds  contained  in 
the  mixture.  The  qualities  of  water  are  no  sum  of  the  quali- 
ties of  hydrogen  and  oxygen,  and  still  less  can  we  expect  to 
explain  the  qualities  of  life  without  regard  to  the  immense 
complexity  of  the  living  substance."  2  It  is  true  that  the  syn- 

1  Article,   "Electrokinetics,"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  llth  ed.,  Vol.  IX, 
p.  212. 

2  The  quotations  are  from  Dr.  P.  C.  Mitchell's  article,  "Life,"  in  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica,  llth  ed. 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  41 

thetic  chemist  has  not  been  able  to  account  for  the  origin  of 
protoplasm  by  artificial  manufacture  from  the  known  ingre- 
dients, but  this,  he  feels,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  has  not  yet 
discovered  the  unique  conditions  of  temperature,  pressure,  etc. 
which  were  present  at  the  geologic  origin  of  life.  In  any  case 
his  ignorance  would  not  be  helped  by  assuming  another  ele- 
ment such  as  vital  impulse.  Vitalism  seems  to  be  laboring 
under  the  confusion  of  trying  to  account  for  the  unique  organ- 
izing relation  as  a  discrete  element  in  the  compound,  which 
is  like  introducing  a  water  impulse  to  account  for  the  unique 
properties  of  water. 

What  impresses  us  about  such  an  energy  system  as  life  is 
not  so  much  the  variables  of  composition,  concentration, 
temperature,  etc.,  as  the  architecture  or  organization.  What 
baffles  us  when  we  try  to  characterize  life  is  that  the  elementary 
properties  we  may  enumerate  may  be  found  singly  in  other 
and  simpler  systems.  Just  as  we  cannot  point  out  a  unique 
element  in  the  composition  of  life,  so  it  is  difficult  to  point 
out  a  unique  property.  Does  living  matter  grow  by  intussus- 
ception as  opposed  to  superficial  addition?  So  do  inorganic 
liquids,  as  when  a  soluble  substance  is  added.  Is  living  matter 
irritable  ?  It  is  easy  to  find  inorganic  matter  which  is  sensitive 
to  specific  stimulation.  The  camera  film  is  far  more  sensitive 
than  our  eye;  the  resonator  than  the  ear,  etc.  As  regards 
instability,  if  we  use  Spencer's  formula  that  "life  is  the  con- 
tinuous adjustment  of  internal  relations  to  external  relations," 
we  can  parallel  the  readjustments  in  the  case  of  life  with  those 
of  inorganic  nature.  In  either  case,  the  action  of  the  stimulus 
is  complicated  by  the  organization  of  the  system  and  its  poten- 
tial energy.  As  regards  mobility,  so  far  as  that  is  characteristic 
of  life,  the  Brownian  movement  is  the  very  image  of  perpetual 
mobility,  and  was  first  mistaken  for  a  living  compound.  So  we 
might  parallel  simple  reproduction  by  "  the  breaking  up  of  a 
drop  of  mercury  into  a  number  of  droplets. "  Cumulative 
disposition  and  differential  action  on  the  basis  of  it  can  be 
paralleled  in  the  inorganic  world.  Nor  are  discriminative 
selection  and  reaction  upon  a  type  peculiarities  of  the  organic 
world.  And,  finally,  the  inorganic  world  acts  in  accordance  with 
the  principles  of  logic  and  mathematics,  even  though  it  may 


42  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

not  be  conscious  of  so  doing.  If  you  take  the  whole  range 
of  organic  action,  therefore,  you  could  doubtless  parallel  the 
various  properties  and  functions  in  the  inorganic  world.  In 
the  large,  too,  the  latter  reveals  such  selective  adaptation  and 
compensation  in  its  moving  equilibrium  as  would  require  an 
"omniscient  demon"  to  establish.  The  uniqueness  of  life  lies 
in  the  fact,  long  ago  pointed  out  by  Fechner,  that  life  in  its 
evolution  brings  together  and  correlates,  into  one  unique  en- 
semble, a  vast  array  of  properties,  which  are  scattered  in  nature. 
This  ensemble  has  unique  properties  of  its  own,  new  ways  of 
storing  potential  energy,  and  new  modes  of  behavior.  No 
theory  of  the  origin  of  life  or  its  relation  to  antecedent  evolu- 
tionary stages  can  affect  the  uniqueness  of  the  system  itself. 
Nor  must  we  regard  its  spontaneous  or  uncertain  character, 
for  our  limited  powers  of  prediction,  as  a  peculiar  merit.  For, 
in  the  first  place,  this  is  due  largely  to  our  ignorance ;  in  the 
second  place,  we  value  conduct  because  it  is  dependable  as 
well  as  because  it  is  novel.  We  prefer  people  who  are  invari- 
ably truthful,  honest,  just,  and  kind  to  those  who  are  liable 
to  do  anything  whatsoever. 

If  we,  finally,  take  up  the  most  complex  type  of  energetic 
system  with  which  we  are  familiar,  viz.  that  of  social  inter- 
actions, we  must  here  too  apply  the  same  postulates.  We 
must  discover  the  variables,  the  organizing  relation,  and  the 
type  of  recurrence  which  we  can  predicate.  We  can  abstract, 
for  the  purpose,  from  the  material  conditions,  such  as  geographi- 
cal configuration,  temperature,  water  supply,  character  of  the 
soil,  etc.,  as  well  as  from  the  organic  conditions  which  form 
the  background  of  the  race,  and  deal  with  a  social  system  as  a 
closed  system,  as  we  have  done  in  the  other  types.  We  may 
find  analogies  from  the  more  elementary  systems  useful  here. 
Sir  Joseph  Larmor,  in  speaking  of  a  material  system,  says : 
"The  amount  of  energy,  defined  in  this  sense  by  convertibility 
with  mechanical  work,  which  is  contained  in  a  material  system, 
must  be  a  function  of  its  physical  state  and  chemical  consti- 
tution and  its  temperature."  1  Translating  these  categories 
into  terms  of  society,  we  may  say  that  the  variables  in  a  social 
system  are  the  group  conditions  in  the  way  of  greater  or  less 
1  Article  on  "Energetics,"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  llth  ed. 


PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM  43 

condensation  of  numbers,  the  mental  constitution  of  the  factors 
involved,  and  the  common  emotional  excitement.  Durkheim 
has  oversimplified  the  problem  when  he  tries  to  account 
for  society  in  terms  of  volume  (or  number)  and  density,  the 
definition  of  material  mass.  These  have  indeed  their  appro- 
priateness. We  find  that  volume  is  a  variable  involved  in 
social  conduct.  The  volume  of  suggestion  makes  it  more 
effective.  The  number  engaged  in  the  action  affects  the  con- 
duct of  the  participants  in  an  altered  sense  of  responsibility 
and  in  the  checks  and  releases  that  obtain.  We  find,  too, 
that  density  or  proximity  has  its  corresponding  effect.  It 
gives  a  peculiar  reality  and  vividness  to  the  relation,  which  is 
particularly  marked  in  crowd  action.  But  these  variables,  if 
used  in  any  limited  sense,  are  not  the  only  ones.  To  understand 
the  psychic  state  or  inertia,  we  must  take  account  of  the  peculiar 
equilibrium  at  the  time,  within  the  group  in  which  we  wish  to 
produce  effects.  This  may  be  a  static  equilibrium  in  the  way 
of  habits  and  traditions,  or  a  moving  equilibrium  in  the  way  of 
certain  tendencies  which  the  group  is  striving  to  realize.  In 
each  case  the  sort  of  equilibrium  that  exists  conditions  our 
action.  Timeliness  of  suggestion  is  important  if  we  would 
accomplish  results.  In  an  equilibrium  moving  in  the  opposite 
direction  from  our  intent,  we  may  find  that  hitting  it  laterally, 
or  by  indirect  suggestion,  encounters  less  inertia  than  hitting 
it  head  on.  Again,  as  regards  constitution,  we  find  that  we 
must  take  account  of  the  individual  characteristics  of  the 
components  in  the  way  of  inherited  and  derived  tendencies. 
The  mental  constitution  conditions  the  type  of  action  which 
we  can  expect.  We  must  know  our  people,  their  race  traits 
of  instinct  and  temperament,  and  their  psychological  tendencies 
of  needs,  ambitions,  and  aversions.  This  is  quite  as  necessary 
as  knowing  the  elements  which  enter  into  the  chemical  com- 
pound. In  either  case,  if  we  fail  to  take  account  of  the  reactive 
properties  of  our  elements,  we  may  find  ourselves  unwilling 
participants  in  an  explosion.  We  must  try  to  discover,  too, 
the  amount  of  emotional  excitement  which  is  necessary  for 
the  specific  reaction  to  take  place.  Social  compounds  have 
their  boiling  point  and  freezing  point,  their  point  of  solvency 
and  crystallization,  as  truly  as  chemical  elements.  We  must 


44  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

find  what  degree  of  affirmation  or  passion  will  precipitate  the 
special  type  of  reaction.  As  in  the  case  of  dynamite,  the  in- 
stability of  the  structure  may  make  the  effect  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  the  releasing  stimulus.  Witness  the  present  war 
of  the  European  nations. 

To  understand  a  social  kinetic  system  we  must  take  account 
of  the  organizing  relation,  as  well  as  the  variables  of  its  constitu- 
tion. We  must  find  the  thought  form,  the  ruling  passion,  the 
dominant  purpose,  which  makes  the  tendencies  converge  in 
one  direction,  be  the  interaction  between  individuals  within 
the  group,  between  the  individual  and  the  group  or  between 
groups.  Sometimes  lust  for  power,  sometimes  love  of  wealth, 
sometimes  self-preservation,  sometimes  racial  prejudice,  some- 
times loyalty  to  truth  and  right  form  the  organizing  bond. 
But  always  there  is  a  striving  for  unity  and  simplification,  for 
a  new  equilibrium,  and  this  gives  direction  to  the  struggling 
motives.  And  as  in  physical  systems,  the  movement  is  direct 
or  in  a  straight  line,  except  as  there  are  interferences  to  overcome 
or  go  around,  so  in  the  social  system.  In  the  end,  ideal  unities 
are  the  only  ones  which  can  succeed  in  giving  an  adequate  and 
durable  direction  to  the  various  claims.  Unified  action  must 
be  reasonable  action. 

In  social  systems,  as  in  simpler  systems,  there  must  be  such 
recurrence  of  traits  and  situations  as  makes  prediction  possible. 
The  difference  lies  in  the  enormous  complexity  of  the  social 
situation.  By  means  of  statistics,  we  can,  to  a  certain  extent, 
eke  out  individual  observation ;  and  in  regard  to  some  types  of 
reactions  such  as  marriages,  births,  suicides,  etc.,  our  curves 
are  fairly  constant;  or,  at  any  rate,  the  deviations  are  clear. 
For  understanding  the  deeper  motives  and  effects  of  human 
conduct,  we  need  historic  perspective.  But  here,  as  in  the 
simpler  systems,  the  facts  have  their  own  perspective  of  which 
we  must  take  account,  relative  though  our  interpretation  must 
necessarily  be,  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  history  is  potentially 
infinite  and  that  interpretation  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the 
creative  human  process. 

In  analyzing  energy  systems  we  have  selected  our  illustrations 
from  the  kinetic  state  of  energy.  This  is  due  partly  to  the  fact 
that  we  found  this  procedure  simpler,  but  more  to  the  fact 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  45 

that  this  state  of  energy  is  more  significant  for  metaphysical 
purposes.  The  potential  state,  that  of  position  or  configura- 
tion, derives  its  significance  from  the  moving  state.  By  poten- 
tial, we  mean  what  energy  can  do  when  certain  conditions  are 
supplied  which  are  different  from  those  obtaining.  Thus,  to 
pass  from  energy  of  position  to  the  kinetic  state,  there  must, 
somehow,  be  unequal  distribution  of  energy.  In  the  case  of 
falling  bodies,  we  have  unequal  distribution  of  gravitational 
energy.  Thermodynamics  is  built  on  the  unequal  distribution 
of  heat.  In  the  case  of  electrical  energy,  "if  any  cause  operates 
to  add  or  remove  electrons  at  one  point,  there  is  an  immedi- 
ate diffusion  of  electrons  to  reestablish  equilibrium,  and  this 
electronic  movement  constitutes  an  electric  current.  This 
hypothesis  explains  the  reason  for  the  identity  between  the 
laws  of  diffusion  of  matter,  of  heat,  and  of  electricity.  Electro- 
motive force  is  then  any  cause  making,  or  tending  to  make,  an 
inequality  of  electronic  density  in  conductors,  and  may  arise 
from  differences  in  temperature,  i.e.  thermo-electromotive  force, 
or  from  chemical  action  when  part  of  the  circuit  is  an  elec- 
trolytic conductor,  or  from  the  movement  of  lines  of  electro- 
magnetic force  across  the  conductor."  1  In  the  case  of  social 
systems,  it  would  be  a  case  of  the  unequal  distribution  of 
emotional-volitional  excitement. 

In  the  potential  state,  energy  is  just  as  real  as  in  the  kinetic 
state,  but  is  balanced  or  in  equilibrium  for  the  time  being.  In 
the  case  of  a  building  supported  on  pillars,  the  energy  of  the 
pillars  balances,  for  the  time  being,  the  gravitational  energy. 
In  the  case  of  human  actions,  certain  tendencies  to  action  are 
balanced  for  the  time  being  by  inhibitions.  A  man  would 
steal,  but  he  is  afraid  of  the  police.  In  either  case,  when 
the  balancing  energy  is  withdrawn,  we  have  an  unequal  dis- 
tribution, and  the  persistent  tendency  becomes  kinetic  energy. 

The  term  potential,  however,  is  sometimes  used  when  we 
contrast  expectancies  under  one  set  of  kinetic  conditions  with 
those  under  another  set.  Certain  electric  vibrations  can  be- 
come sensations  of  light  to  us  when  they  act  upon  a  photochemic 
retina;  and  certain  air  vibrations  can  become  sensations  of 
sound  when  they  strike  our  ear  and  are  transmitted  to  our  cor- 

1  Article  on  "Electrokinetics,"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  llth  ed. 


46  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

tical  centers.  Here  the  contrast  is  not  between  energy  of  con- 
figuration and  energy  of  motion,  but  between  what  happens 
in  the  case  of  different  reagents.  In  any  case,  the  properties 
which  are  observed  in  certain  contexts  cannot  be  said  to  pre- 
exist independent  of  the  contexts  as  was  supposed  by  Anaxa- 
goras,  for  example.  According  to  him,  the  fruit  of  Demeter 
which  we  eat,  and  the  water  which  we  drink  must  contain  the 
germs  of  blood  and  tissue  and  bone  and  hair  which  they  serve 
to  build  up.  The  reason  that  things  can  produce  such  different 
results  in  different  combinations  is  that  everything  contains 
a  portion  of  everything.  It  is  only  the  proportion  of  the  prop- 
erties which  varies,  and  which  determines  the  character  of 
the  particular  thing.  If  pain  is  present  in  stimuli  of  a  great 
intensity,  then  it  must  be  a  latent  property  at  any  intensity. 
But  potential  is  not  a  category  of  the  actual  world,  but  of  our 
social  expectancy.  The  chicken  is  not  present  in  the  fresh  egg 
at  all.  It  would  be  nauseating  to  think  so.  Knowing  that 
certain  properties  appear  in  certain  energy  systems,  we  can 
predict  that  they  will  recur  when  the  conditions  are  repeated, 
but  they  are  only  real  within  the  system. 

Potential  energy,  therefore,  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  dis- 
tinct type,  to  be  set  over  against  such  types  as  material  and 
electrical  systems.  It  is  rather  a  set  of  expectancies  which  we 
may  have  in  regard  to  any  type  when  we  contrast  one  condition 
with  other  conditions.  We  may  contrast  the  condition  of 
balance  or  equilibrium  with  work  done  when  the  special  type 
of  energy  exists  in  a  kinetic  state ;  or  we  may  contrast  the  work 
done  under  one  set  of  kinetic  conditions  with  that  done  under 
another  set.  Nature  obviously  does  not  know  the  word  poten- 
tial. It  is  a  contrast  which  is  contributed  by  our  mind.  In 
reality  each  reactive  relation  is  uniquely  determined,  —  in 
the  case  of  material  systems,  by  such  characteristics  as  the 
physical  state,  chemical  composition,  and  temperature,  by 
geometrical  pattern  and  direction,  by  cumulative  numerical 
values,  and  by  distance.  Potential  is  not  a  characteristic  which 
figures  in  the  determinations  of  a  system.  The  tendency  to 
read  our  expectancies  into  reality  as  though  they  existed  prior 
to  and  independent  of  the  dynamic  situation  is  only  another 
instance  of  the  pathetic  fallacy. 


PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM  47 

Some  Empirical  Laws  of  Energy 

We  have  dealt  so  far  with  different  types  of  energy  systems 
and  the  factors  which  determine  such  systems.  While  each 
type  of  system  must  be  taken  as  unique  and  its  specific  char- 
acteristics observed,  there  are  some  characteristics  which  seem 
to  hold  for  all  systems  of  energy.  Beside  the  general  postulates 
of  variable,  form,  and  recurrence  which  hold  for  all  systems, 
there  are  certain  empirical  postulates  which  pertain  to  energy 
systems  in  particular.  These  general  characteristics  are  some- 
times called  laws,  though  this  is  somewhat  of  a  misnomer  since 
they  have  only  been  verified  for  some  limited  systems.  One 
of  these  is  the  law  of  conservation  of  energy  and  closely  asso- 
ciated with  this  is  the  conservation  of  mass.  The  law  of  con- 
servation of  energy  has  definite  meaning  when  we  deal  with 
special  energy  systems.  In  a  material  system,  for  example,  it 
signifies  that  when  a  certain  amount  of  energy  disappears 
as  motion,  it  reappears  as  heat ;  and  the  quantity  of  heat  is 
equivalent  to  the  lost  motion,  though  from  the  point  of  view 
of  available  energy  it  is  only  in  part  convertible  into  motion. 
It  is  equally  easy  to  show  the  meaning  of  the  law  in  the  case 
of  an  electrical  system  of  energy.  Energy  which  disappears 
as  electricity  is  found  to  reappear  in  the  equivalencies  of 
mechanical  motion,  chemical  decomposition,  or  heat.  In 
organic  and  social  systems  it  is  difficult  to  ascertain  exact 
equivalencies  in  the  complexity  of  changes  involved.  But 
here,  too,  we  can  in  part,  at  any  rate,  note  such  equivalencies. 
In  fact  it  was  in  connection  with  the  potentials  of  foodstuffs 
in  their  relation  to  physiological  activity,  that  Mayer  first 
suggested  the  law,  which  was  afterwards  tested  for  material 
and  electrical  energies  by  Joule.  It  is  clear  that  in  organic 
and  mental  work  there  is  a  relation  between  nourishment  and 
work  done ;  there  is  also  an  equivalent  in  the  way  of  heat  as 
energy  is  used  up.  The  heat  of  the  skull,  in  the  case  of  mental 
activity,  is  found  to  increase,  and  can  be  measured,  though 
that  of  course  is  only  one  of  the  equivalents  of  mental  work. 
Here  as  in  mechanical  energy,  we  must  take  account  of  the 
going  on  of  the  impulse  itself  and  its  effects  in  kind,  which 
it  would  not  seem  possible  to  measure  in  an  exact  way.  When 


48  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

you  try  to  state  the  law  of  conservation  of  energy  as  true  of 
all  systems,  Poincare  is  quite  right  that  it  is  necessarily  vague. 
It  signifies  that  there  is  some  sort  of  constancy,  that  there  are 
equivalencies,  but  it  furnishes  no  definite  content.  Even  so, 
however,  it  has  more  meaning  than  the  old  barren  formula  of 
identity  in  difference. 

The  law  of  conservation  of  mass  or  inertia  is  similarly  empir- 
ical. It  has  been  verified  for  some  of  the  simpler  systems 
of  energy.  Gravitational  mass  can  be  taken  as  practically 
constant  at  a  certain  point  of  the  earth's  surface.  In  the  case 
of  electrical  mass  we  can  measure  the  inertia  of  the  current  or 
electromagnetic  field.  In  the  more  complex  forms  of  energy, 
such  as  the  organic  and  social  systems,  we  are  equally  aware 
of  the  reality  of  inertia,  and  must  deal  with  it,  though  we  have 
no  exact  way  of  measuring  it.  We  know,  in  any  case,  that 
inertia  varies  with  motion.  A  moving  body  presents  a  differ- 
ent inertia  from  a  body  at  rest.  In  the  case  of  high  velocities, 
approximating  the  velocity  of  light,  there  is  a  sudden  increase 
of  mass.  Mass  also  varies  with  direction.  A  body  in  motion 
presents  greater  inertia  to  a  body  moving  in  the  opposite 
direction  than  to  a  lateral  impulse.  This  is  equally  true  of  the 
inertia  of  material  bodies,  of  electric  currents,  and  of  social 
inertia.  The  constancy  of  mass  in  any  case  is  a  pragmatic 
affair. 

Another  characteristic,  which  seems  to  be  practically  general 
so  far  as  our  observation  is  able  to  go,  has  been  called  the  law 
of  degradation  of  energy.  There  is  a  tendency  for  energy  to 
move  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  potential.  Since  activity  de- 
pends upon  an  unequal  distribution  of  potentials,  there  would 
seem  to  be  a  tendency  for  the  available  energy  to  decrease, 
and  for  the  universe  to  run  down.  This  is  particularly  notice- 
able in  connection  with  the  constant  tendency  for  a  certain 
amount  of  energy  to  be  dissipated  as  heat  which  can  only  in 
part  be  made  available ;  but  it  holds  wherever  there  are  un- 
compensated  expenditures  of  energy.  This  law  does  not  con- 
tradict the  law  of  conservation  of  energy  since  the  sum  total 
of  energy  would  still  remain  constant,  even  if  all  available  energy 
were  diffused  into  random  molecular  motions,  such  as  we  ob- 
serve in  the  Brownian  movement.  While  the  degradation  of 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  49 

energy  seems  to  be  inevitable,  from  the  point  of  view  of  our 
limited  survey  and  control,  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  an  ultimate 
law  of  the  universe.  The  Greeks  with  inferior  tools,  but  a 
superior  imagination,  realized  this.  In  the  words  of  Empedo- 
cles:  "For  if  they  (the  elements)  have  been  passing  away  con- 
tinually, they  would  not  be  now."  1  Maxwell  showed  that  an 
omniscient  demon,  by  sorting  all  the  greater  velocities  on  one 
side  of  an  imaginary  partition,  and  all  the  lesser  velocities  on 
the  other  side,  could  create  new  available  energy.  "This  shows 
that  the  principle  of  the  dissipation  of  energy  has  control  over 
the  actions  of  those  agents  only,  whose  faculties  are  too  gross 
to  enable  them  to  grapple  individually  with  the  minute  por- 
tions of  matter  which  are  the  seat  of  energy."  2  If  the  universe 
is  infinite  in  time,  there  must  be  some  compensating  agency 
corresponding  to  Maxwell's  omniscient  demon  which  keeps  the 
universe  wound  up.  It  remains  true,  nevertheless,  that  for 
our  practical  purposes  energy  systems  are  in  part,  at  any  rate, 
irreversible. 

Any  postulate,  which  is  based  on  a  one  way  process,  —  such 
as  the  law  of  equilibrium,  the  law  of  least  stress,  Spencer's  law 
of  evolution  as  a  passing  from  homogeneity  to  heterogeneity, 
with  a  corresponding  dissipation  of  motion,  —  can  only  have 
significance  for  limited  systems  within  our  experience.  If  we 
apply  them  to  reality  in  its  wholeness,  without  compensation, 
they  imply  a  finite  beginning  and  end  of  our  world.  In  an  in- 
finite past,  any  one  way  process  of  finite  changes  must  have 
run  its  course  innumerable  ages  ago. 

Another  characteristic  which  seems  to  be  universal  is  that  of 
rhythm.  We  have  long  been  familiar  with  the  rhythmic  char- 
acter of  some  of  the  large  movements  that  give  us  the  periodicity 
which  is  the  basis  of  our  time  measurements,  whether  in  the 
rhythmic  functions  of  the  organism  or  of  our  astronomic  system. 
We  have  observed,  too,  the  rhythm  in  the  evolution  of  life  forms 
where  periods  of  stability  seem  to  alternate  with  periods  of 
mutation ;  and  we  are  familiar  with  a  similar  rhythm  in  the 
social  history  of  the  race.  It  is  only  recently,  however,  that 
Planck's  theory  of  quanta  has  called  our  attention  to  the  same 

1  Burnet's  translation,  line  90. 

'Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  llth  ed.,  article,  "Energy." 


50  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

rhythmic  character  in  the  more  minute  and  simpler  systems  of 
energy  where  we  seem  to  observe  the  systole  and  diastole  of 
nature's  heart.  Energy  seems  to  proceed  by  finite  drops 
rather  than  by  continuous  and  infinitesimal  gradations.  Mo- 
ments of  potential  and  active  energy  alternate.  It  is  also 
discontinuous  as  regards  the  quantitative  conditions  of  its 
activity.  Effects  of  a  characteristic  kind  take  place  only 
when  a  certain  threshold  of  inertia  has  been  overcome.  This 
is  illustrated  in  the  physiological  realm  by  Weber's  law,  which 
formulates  the  fact  that  certain  differences  in  sensation  can 
be  perceived  only  when  the  stimulus  is  increased  by  a  definite 
ratio  of  the  previous  amount. 

We  have  seen  that  relativity  is  a  fundamental  characteristic 
of  energy  systems.  Properties  vary  with  the  system.  We 
can  speak  of  no  properties  in  the  abstract.  Our  standards  of 
measurement  are  subject  to  variation  no  less  than  the  things 
measured.  For  practical  purposes,  we  standardize  our  units 
of  measurement  by  making  the  conditions  as  stable  as  we  can. 
But  at  best  the  conditions  of  which  we  can  take  account  are 
limited.  If  our  standards  and  the  things  to  be  measured  vary 
alike  with  reference  to  conditions  outside  of  our  observation, 
we  are  necessarily  ignorant  of  such  variations,  and  for  practical 
purposes  they  do  not  concern  us.  But  theoretically  the  thought 
is  uncanny  and  disquieting.  We  know  of  no  absolute  position 
in  space  or  absolute  system  of  relations.  Motion  is  for  us 
relative  to  a  limited  system  of  positions  which  we  have  selected 
for  provisional  purposes.  Our  generalizations,  whether  of  facts 
or  values,  are  circumscribed  by  the  relative  systems  of  our  ex- 
perience. Our  standards  of  measurement,  whether  of  energy, 
time,  or  space,  are  all  alike  pragmatic.  They  are  conveniences 
within  the  particular  conditions  with  which  we  happen  to  deal. 
And  so  long  as  we  can  find  our  way  and  perform  our  common 
tasks  on  the  basis  of  them,  they  are  practically  valid.  This 
does  not  mean  absolute  agnosticism,  since  such  properties  as 
we  experience,  and  such  relative  relations  as  we  can  observe, 
must  be  real  in  any  case,  however  fragmentary  they  may  be, 
and  however  much  more  intelligible  they  might  become  in 
more  comprehensive  systems.  Nor  does  relativity  mean 
neutralism.  It  is  only  our  intellectual  abstractions  that  are 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  51 

neutral.  Things  for  us  must  be  known  as  ensembles  of  prop- 
erties within  energy  systems.  As  such,  they  do  real  work. 
When  we  speak  of  activity  as  the  common  characteristic  of 
all  our  real  systems,  it  is  not  the  abstract  concept  of  activity 
which  does  work,  but  activity  as  uniquely  determined  within 
the  special  system  with  its  movement  and  form.  Neutralism 
is  the  emasculated  ghost  of  the  old  superstition  of  abstract, 
independent  entities,  —  the  grin  without  the  old  metaphysical 
cat  of  inert  substance,  but  none  the  less  reminiscent  of  that 
beast.  Not  even  mathematical  entities  have  any  meaning 
except  as  predicative  functions  within  a  system,  though  here 
the  system  is  analytic,  determined  purely  by  our  assumed  ini- 
tial postulates.  Energetic  systems  are  empirical.  Their  prop- 
erties must  be  discovered  a  posteriori. 

The  Relation  of  Energy  Systems  to  One  Another 

It  is  the  custom  of  science  to  deal  with  systems  of  energy 
as  closed  systems.  We  have  seen,  however,  that  certain  char- 
acteristics overlap  and  seem  to  hold  for  all  energy  systems.  The 
question  naturally  arises  as  to  the  relation  of  these  systems  to 
one  another.  Can  we  find  a  common  denominator?  Science 
deals  with  special  systems  and  their  characteristics.  The 
transition  from  one  system  to  another  —  from  gases  to  liquids 
and  solids,  from  the  chemical  elements  to  their  compounds, 
from  material  systems  to  electrical  and  mental  systems,  with 
the  unique  ensemble  of  properties  in  each  case  —  science  takes 
as  a  matter  of  fact.  It  recognizes  the  discontinuities  in  nature 
as  well  as  the  continuities.  Whether  we  are  concerned  with 
conditions  that  are  under  our  control,  as  in  the  production  of 
the  compound,  water;  from  hydrogen  and  oxygen  in  the  chemical 
laboratory,  or  with  conditions  antecedent  to  our  experience  by 
vast  geologic  ages,  and  still  unknown  to  us,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  compound,  life,  science  accepts  new  beginnings  as  facts, 
and  observes  and  catalogues  the  characteristics  of  the  new 
system  as  best  it  can. 

Philosophy  cannot  know  more  than  science  about  matters 
with  which  science  deals.  It  has  no  business  to  stick  to  inert 
substance  when  science  has  found  the  conception  of  energy 
the  more  fruitful  one.  It  has  no  right  to  pass  upon  the  facts 


52  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

or  theories  of  science  so  far  as  these  are  based  on  experience, 
and  found  serviceable  in  meeting  our  practical  problems.  But 
it  is  the  province  of  philosophy  to  try  to  understand  science  by 
correlating  its  results  with  each  other,  and  with  the  permanent 
demands  of  the  race. 

It  would  seem,  in  the  first  place,  that  creative  synthesis  is 
of  the  very  nature  of  reality.  We  must  accept  the  new  qualities 
and  values  as  gifts,  whether  it  be  the  compounding  of  mechanical 
forces  in  a  new  direction,  or  the  properties  of  chemical  com- 
pounds, or  a  new  life  unity,  or  a  new  social  bond.  In  each 
case,  we  must  take  account  of  the  properties  unique  to  the 
specific  situation,  as  well  as  observe  the  persisting  constants. 
In  each  case,  we  must  follow  the  lead  of  experience,  and  shape 
our  theories  accordingly.  Each  energy  system  with  its  prop- 
erties must  be  taken  as  real.  It  has  just  such  properties  and 
relations  as  are  manifest  in  the  system,  whether  they  be  the 
simpler  properties  of  material  systems,  or  the  more  complex 
properties  of  such  systems  as  life  and  mind.  There  is  nothing 
occult  about  energy,  except  as  our  ignorance  makes  it  so. 

In  the  second  place,  systems  of  energy,  as  we  find  them  in 
the  real  world,  overlap.  There  are  no  closed  systems  except 
for  our  abstract  purposes  of  description.  They  make  definite 
differences  to  each  other.  They  interpenetrate  and  interlock 
into  one  energetic  world.  Energies,  throughout  the  complexi- 
ties of  systems,  retain  their  primal  property  of  doing  work. 
They  are  ever  expended  into  other  energies  and  reimbursed 
from  them  in  the  great  clearing  house  of  nature.  The  cleavages 
are  of  our  own  making.  They  are  due  to  our  assumptions,  not 
to  reality.  When,  for  example,  science  held  to  the  hypothesis 
of  inert  substances,  acting  on  each  other  by  impact  —  inert, 
extended,  material  substances  and  inert,  non-extended,  mental 
substances  —  as  its  working  model  of  reality,  it  was  difficult  to 
see  how  material  energy  could  in  any  way  make  a  difference  to 
mental.  It  would  be  equally  difficult  to  see  how  it  could  make 
any  difference  to  electrical  systems,  where  likewise  molecular 
models  do  not  seem  to  apply.  In  either  case,  we  should  have 
to  invoke  parallelism  with  its  absurd  results  to  bolster  up  our 
initial  assumptions.  But  our  intellectual  models  cannot  alter 
the  facts.  The  real  units  of  reality,  we  have  seen,  are  not 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  53 

inert  entities,  but  energy  systems,  in  one  type  of  which  material 
properties  constitute  a  differential  characteristic.  The  ener- 
getic conception  of  reality  leaves  us  free  to  follow  the  lead  of 
the  facts,  and  to  recognize  such  continuities  and  discontinuities, 
such  uniqueness  and  interdependence  as  we  find.  Electricity 
gives  rise  to  mechanical  and  chemical  changes;  and  they,  in 
turn,  serve  to  liberate  electricity ;  and  while  the  latter  is  more 
subtile  and  pervasive,  it  is  the  material  world  which  canalizes 
our  electrical  energies  and  makes  them  serviceable.  Plant  life 
is  dependent  upon  the  material  systems  for  nutriment  and 
framework,  and  upon  light  and  heat  for  the  processes  of 
assimilation  and  growth.  The  mental  type  of  system  leans 
upon  the  material  and  organic  systems.  It  requires  proper 
nutriment,  proper  conditions  of  temperature  and  light,  proper 
bodily  position,  proper  rhythms  of  rest,  in  order  to  do  its  work, 
not  to  mention  its  dependence  upon  neural  structure.  It  is 
clear  that  it  is  the  more  complex  systems  that  overlap  and  are 
correspondingly  dependent  upon  simpler  systems.  Heat  would 
seem  to  be  the  lowest  and  most  amorphous  type  of  energy  from 
our  point  of  view,  as  the  more  complex  energies  seem  to  be 
dissipated  as  heat,  and  thus  seemingly  lost  as  available  energy. 
But  as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  this  can  hold  only  for 
our  limited  perspective  and  powers  of  control. 

Reality  reveals  itself  in  many  systems.  It  is  matter,  it  is 
light,  it  is  electricity,  it  is  mind,  it  is  truth,  right,  and  beauty. 
It  is  all  of  these  and  many  others.  All  the  varying  phases 
belong  to  it,  and  one  is  no  more  real  than  the  other.  It  is 
"  day  and  night,  winter  and  summer,  war  and  peace,  satiety  and 
hunger;  but  it  takes  various  shapes,  just  as  fire,  when  it  is 
mingled  with  different  incenses,  is  named  according  to  the  savor 
of  each." 1  The  more  complex  systems  furnish  a  greater  variety 
of  properties,  but  however  imposing  they  may  be,  they  must 
trail  along  and  draw  their  sustenance  from  the  simpler,  even 
as  the  ivy  trails  along  and  draws  its  sustenance  from  the  soil. 
While  the  more  complex  systems  logically  overlap  the  simpler, 
which  they  presuppose  as  conditions  and  instruments,  this  does 
not  mean  that  the  simpler  have  no  existence  of  their  own,  but  are 
always  dissolved  or  taken  up  into  the  more  complex.  When  they 

1  Adaptation  of  Heraclitus,  fr.  36,  Burnet's  translation. 


54  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

are  so  taken  up,  they  cease  to  exist  as  simpler.  Water,  as  an 
individual  compound,  has  definite,  characteristic  properties; 
while  water,  taken  up  into  other  compounds,  inorganic  and 
organic,  is  no  longer  water.  It  has  lost  its  individuality.  But 
the  water  that  satisfies  thirst,  with  many  other  unique  prop- 
erties, has  claims  of  its  own.  We  do  not  want  it  merely 
abrogated  into  more  complex  systems.  We  would  not  want 
to  drink  water  that  has  entered  as  a  constituent  into  blood,  or 
let  the  children  play  with  water  that  has  been  taken  up  into 
nitroglycerine.  In  the  economy  of  the  whole,  one  system 
cannot  be  said  to  be  more  necessary  or  real  than  the  rest. 
Here,  at  any  rate,  the  words  of  Browning  hold : 

"  *  *  *  Nor  soul  helps  flesh 
More  now,  than  flesh  helps  soul." 

Of  each,  we  must  say,  in  characterizing  reality:  "That  art 
thou."  There  is  no  substrate  except  the  interlocking,  inter- 
dependent energies ;  no  unity,  except  the  form  of  each,  and  of 
the  multicolored  whole. 

The  passion  for  simplicity,  however,  is  incurably  rooted  in 
the  human  mind,  and  there  will  always  be  the  attempt  to 
reduce  the  concrete  variety  of  the  world  into  some  primordial 
system,  be  it  matter,  electricity,  or  mind.  This  seems  a 
mistaken  and  fruitless  quest.  We  must  adhere  to  the  prag- 
matic postulate  without  which  we  could  not  proceed  at  all, 
viz.  that  reality  is  what  it  manifests  itself  to  be  in  its  varying 
contexts.  The  process  is  fundamentally  a  creative  process. 
It  is  not  a  shuffling  of  neutral  entities.  The  properties  are 
combining  properties;  they  are  uniquely  determined  by  the 
system.  We  have  no  right  to  dogmatize,  whether  in  reading 
backward  from  the  more  complex  systems  to  the  simpler  ones, 
or  forward  from  the  simpler  to  the  more  complex.  We  must 
find  our  way  on  the  basis  of  experience  and  take  reality  as  it 
exists  at  each  stage  of  complexity. 

We  can,  indeed,  classify  systems  on  the  basis  of  common 
and  differential  traits;  and  we  find  that  some  can  be  treated 
as  varieties  of  one  species.  Thus  it  has  been  found  that  elec- 
tricity, light,  radiant  heat,  and  magnetism  can  be  successfully 
dealt  with  on  the  basis  of  a  common  electronic  theory,  though 


PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM  55 

their  differentia  are  no  less  significant  than  before.  It  has 
been  suggested  that  nervous  energy  may  be  reduced  to  the 
electrical  type.  Says  Professor  Gotch:  "Physiology  has  defi- 
nite grounds  for  believing  that,  as  far  as  present  knowledge 
goes,  both  the  production  and  cessation  of  central  nervous  dis- 
charges are  the  expression  of  'propagated  changes,  and  that 
these  changes  reveal  themselves  as  physico-chemical  changes 
of  an  electrolytic  character.  The  nervous  process,  which 
rightly  seems  to  us  so  recondite,  does  not,  in  the  light  of  this 
conception,  owe  its  physiological  mystery  to  a  new  form  of 
energy,  but  to  a  circumstance  that  a  mode  of  energy  displayed 
in  the  non-living  world  occurs  in  colloidal  electrolytic  structures 
of  great  chemical  complexity."  While  science  thus  seems  to 
have  succeeded  in  simplifying  large  domains  of  facts,  so  long 
seemingly  heterogeneous,  it  has  also  discovered  new  varieties 
and  complexities  which  challenge  further  reduction  and  corre- 
sponding overhauling  of  old  categories,  as  in  the  case  of  radio- 
active energies.  For  pragmatic  purposes,  three  general  types 
of  systems  would  seem  to  stand  out  —  the  material  type  of 
system  with  its  differentia  of  gravitational  mass  and  molecular 
motion ;  the  electrical  type  of  system  with  the  electron  as  its 
energy  unit;  and  the  mental  type  of  system  where  conative 
tendency,  with  its  possibilities  of  consciously  directed  action, 
cognition,  and  appreciation,  is  fundamental.  But  such  a 
classification  is  purely  a  matter  of  convenience,  and  throws  no 
light  upon  the  process  itself. 

We  seem  to  get  more  light  when  we  take  the  evolutionary 
point  of  view.  No  doubt  our  systems  of  energy,  as  we  observe 
them  to-day,  are  the  result  of  a  long  process  of  selection  and 
survival.  Darwin  showed  this  in  a  classic  way  for  the  organic 
type  of  system.  It  is  equally  clear  for  the  more  complex  mental 
systems,  on  the  basis  of  which  we  must  understand  human 
history.  Nor  does  the  inorganic  world  lie  outside  this  evo- 
lutionary conception.  The  properties  of  matter,  the  dis- 
tribution and  concentration  of  the  elements,  and  the  stability 
of  the  present  material  structure  —  these  are  all  the  result  of 
a  selective  survival  process.  It  does  not  seem  probable  that 
this  marvelous  adaptation  of  the  material  system  to  telescope 
into  and  form  a  fit  environment  for  more  complex  systems  such 


56  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

as  life,  can  be  accounted  for  on  the  basis  of  mere  chance.1  It 
is  "more  congenial"  to  our  mind,  to  use  Poincare's  phrase,  to 
assume  intelligent  selection  within  the  process,  however  much 
such  selection  may  surpass  our  faculties.  That  systems  exist 
at  all  —  relationships  of  processes  statable  in  terms  of  a  few 
simple  principles  —  would  seem  in  itself,  as  Newton  long  ago 
pointed  out,  an  indication  of  rational  emphasis  within  the 
world  of  which  our  reason  is  a  part. 

While  the  empirical  generalizations  about  evolution  must 
always  have  significance  for  our  reading  of  reality,  their  meta- 
physical interpretation  is  often  confused.  Here  the  mechanical 
tendency  of  the  human  mind  has  come  in  to  vitiate  the  reading. 
While  we  can  trace  a  sequence  from  simpler  to  more  complex 
systems,  within  a  given  series,  we  cannot  say,  therefore,  that 
the  properties  of  the  more  complex  systems  are  compounded 
out  of  the  properties  of  the  simpler  ones.  If  complex  life- 
systems  have  evolved  from  unicellular  organisms,  it  does  not 
follow  that  they  are  a  mere  mechanical  combination  of  the 
simpler  organisms.  New  properties  have  been  developed 
as  a  result  of  the  organization,  differentiation,  and  selection 
within  the  process,  in  its  adaptation  to  a  larger  environment. 
These  properties  must  be  taken  for  what  they  are  in  each  stage 
of  development. 

Owing  to  the  early  progress,  as  well  as  to  the  convenience, 
of  mechanical  science,  it  was  natural  that  material  systems 
should  come  to  be  emphasized  as  the  essential  type  of  reality, 
and  that  the  more  complex  systems  should  be  regarded  as 
compounded  out  of  material  properties.  But  while  we  must 
recognize  material  properties  as  real  within  the  systems  where 
we  find  them,  we  have  no  reason  to  regard  them  as  any  more 
real  than  the  unique  properties  or  ensembles  of  properties  which 
appear  in  more  complex  systems,  such  as  life  and  mind.  Even 
if  the  material  type  of  system  were  absolutely  earlier,  it  would 
not  follow  that  it  is  more  real.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  material 
type  of  system  is  just  as  much  an  evolution  as  the  organic  type. 
And  while,  in  our  limited  series  of  geological  evolution,  the 
material  system  had  to  evolve  to  a  certain  stage  before  life 

JSee  in  this  connection  "The  Fitness  of  the  Environment,"  by  Professor 
Lawrence  Henderson. 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  57 

forms  could  appear,  the  two  types  of  systems  have  for  long  ages 
evolved  together  and  a  corresponding  fitness  been  established. 
Nor  does  it  follow  from  the  temporal  antecedence  of  the  material 
properties  that  they  could  give  rise  to  the  properties  of  the 
more  complex  systems,  or  that  the  material  properties  are  of 
greater  importance  in  understanding  reality.  The  real  ener- 
gies which  we  deal  with  in  evolution  have  other  potentialities 
than  material  properties;  and  it  is  these  potentialities  that 
come  to  light  in  the  creative  process  of  the  universe.  It  is  not 
the  properties  of  extension,  weight,  cohesiveness,  etc.,  which 
constitute  life,  though  they  are  present,  and  form  an  important 
index  to  our  description  of  life  processes.  Life  is  characterized 
by  the  ensemble  of  properties  which  is  unique  to  its  own  system 
and  which  cannot  be  said  to  exist  at  all  in  material  systems. 
The  properties  of  the  simple  systems  must  be  treated  as  in- 
strumental when  we  deal  with  the  more  complex  systems. 
They  are,  as  it  were,  handles  or  signs,  by  means  of  which  we 
can  lay  hold  of  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  describe  and  control 
the  conditions  of  the  more  complex  systems.  Thus  we  are 
able  to  produce  a  chemical  compound  with  its  new  properties, 
once  we  know  the  constituent  elements  and  the  proper  conditions 
of  temperature,  etc.  Thus  the  great  nature  chemist  was 
able  to  produce,  through  the  energies  of  a  seemingly  dead  world, 
the  properties  of  life ;  but  the  deadness  exists  only  in  our  in- 
tellectualistic  misconceptions.  To  try  to  account  for  life  as 
a  compound  of  material  properties  is  as  reasonable  as  to  try 
to  account  for  the  characteristic  thinking  of  a  man  on  the  basis 
of  his  size  and  weight.  These  are  indeed  important  for  certain 
kinds  of  behavior  of  human  beings  —  getting  a  suit  of  clothes 
for  example  —  but  they  do  not  as  such  account  for  their  think- 
ing. 

The  electrical  theory  is  subject  to  the  same  criticism  as  the 
old  material  atomism.  We  cannot  account  for  matter  as  a 
mere  arithmetic  sum  of  negative  electric  charges  any  more 
than  we  can  account  for  life  as  a  sum  of  material  properties. 
The  material  atom  is,  on  any  theory,  a  unique  system  with  its 
own  combining  relations  with  other  atoms,  its  own  unique 
properties,  which  are  not  the  properties  of  free  electrons ;  and 
adding  an  unknown  element  of  positive  electricity  does  not 


58  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

clarify  the  situation,  any  more  than  adding  vital  impulse  to  a 
material  system  explains  life.  Whether  such  an  element  is 
proved  to  exist  or  not,  we  should  still  have  to  take  account  of 
the  concrete  system  of  matter  itself  with  its  concentration, 
pattern,  durability,  and  reactive  properties.  On  any  theory, 
the  material  system  is  uniquely  real;  and  we  must  take  the 
characteristics  as  they  exist  in  the  system  itself.  There  is 
indeed  an  interesting  analogy,  as  pointed  out  by  J.  J.  Thomson 
and  others,  between  the  figures  assumed  by  magnets  in  an 
electrodynamic  field  and  the  periodic  law  of  the  elements.  But 
mathematical  laws  sometimes  hold  for  decidedly  disparate 
systems.  Witness  the  formula  for  kinetic  energy.  The 
different  conductivity  of  different  elements  would  not  prove, 
any  more  than  disprove,  an  electrical  substrate.  A  man 
carrying  a  log  is  not  necessarily  a  log.  Even  if  the  char- 
acteristic properties  of  matter,  such  as  extension  and  weight, 
can  be  simplified  for  purposes  of  description  by  being  stated 
in  terms  of  motion  and  distance,  or  if  the  material  atom  can  be 
regarded  for  certain  purposes  as  a  halfway  house  for  treating 
facts  which  are  further  dissociable  into  electric  charges  with 
their  particular  and  constellation  velocities,  it  still  remains 
true  that  extension  and  weight  are  practical  determinants 
which  matter  does  possess,  and  which  electric  charges,  as  we 
ordinarily  understand  them,  do  not  possess. 

To  try,  again,  to  account  for  matter  as  mind,  —  "  degraded  " 
or  "estranged"  mind,  "mind  hide-bound  with  habit,"  —  is 
at  best  a  confusing  use  of  language.  Material  systems  do  not 
have  the  properties  of  mental  systems.  They  are  as  unique 
as  the  latter  and  have  their  own  claims  to  reality.  They  are 
not  dignified  one  whit  by  being  associated  with  the  name  of 
mind.  There  is  no  reason,  moreover,  for  using  opprobrious 
epithets  about  matter.  It  has  its  own  place  and  importance 
in  the  economy  of  reality.  It  is  the  unique  distribution,  con- 
centration, and  durability  of  the  material  world  which  makes 
possible  the  more  complex  systems  of  life  and  mind.  Through 
the  correlative  evolution  of  matter,  reality  makes  possible 
that  other  series  of  evolution  which  terminates  in  significant 
and  appreciative  reactions  to  the  world.  The  material  and 
vegetative  systems  furnish  the  stored-up  energy,  the  stable 


PRAGMATIC  ENERGISM  59 

frame,  the  means  of  canalization  of  the  more  subtile  energies. 
They  furnish  the  tools,  —  direct  in  our  bodily  movements, 
indirect  in  the  case  of  material  instruments,  —  which  make 
intelligent  behavior  possible. 

There  is  one  sense  in  which  we  can  speak  of  the  more  complex 
systems  as  higher  and  more  real.  They  reveal  more  fully 
the  potencies,  the  actuality  of  the  world  of  energies  in  which 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  They  overlap  logically. 
They  imply  the  simpler  systems,  such  as  the  material  and  elec- 
trical, as  their  background  and  instruments.  They  [indicate, 
in  a  more  concrete  way,  the  direction,  the  formal  organization 
of  the  larger  world,  the  system  of  systems,  from  which  our 
fragmentary  systems  are  abstractions.  It  is  because  this 
system  of  systems,  with  its  potencies  and  form,  interpenetrates 
the  humblest  parts  of  the  universe,  and  gives  direction  to  the 
whole,  that  it  seems  as  though  the  simpler  systems  produced 
the  more  complex.  But  what  we  call  "matter"  is  more  than 
matter.  The  seemingly  inert  energies  of  our  world  are  fraught 
with  infinite  potentialities  as  they  enter  into  the  more  and  more 
complex  systems,  and  yield  up  the  for-us  hidden  properties, 
in  the  stress  of  heat,  in  electrolysis,  in  organic  assimilation,  in 
the  emotional  excitement  of  mind  associations.  We  may  well 
say  with  Browning : 

"  Well,  this  cold  clay  clod  was  man's  heart : 
Crumble  it,  and  what  comes  next  ?    Is  it  God  ?  " 

rln  the  case  of  one  system,  the  various  systems  do  indeed 
converge  into  one  unique  relation  so  far  as  we  are  concerned. 
And  that  is  in  the  cognitive  system.  It  is  mere  tautology  to 
say  that  for  us  to  speak  of  energies  they  must  first  be  known. 
In  so  far  as  known,  they  are  indeed  uniquely  determined  by  the 
cognitive  relation.  But  it  is  a  false  assumption  to  suppose  that 
our  knowing  the  forms  and  properties  of  systems  constitutes 
their  existence.  We  can  know  the  systems  because  they  exist 
and  have  a  certain  form  and  certain  properties.  This  is  as 
true  of  our  own  past  as  of  the  Milky  Way.  Our  taking  account 
of  them  is  an  afterthought.  It  does  not  alter  the  unique  sys- 
tems of  which  we  take  account.  The  stellar  system,  the  prop- 
erties of  our  material  environment,  the  reactive  properties  of 


60  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

plants,  the  civilization  of  Greece,  existed  —  they  had  their  own 
properties  and  form  —  long  before  we  took  account  of  them. 
Hence,  we  can  abstract  from  our  personal  perspectives  and 
socialize  them.  We  socialize  our  space  orientation,  which  in 
the  first  instance  depends  upon  the  organism  and  its  needs.  To 
make  intelligible  our  fleeting  perceptions,  we  interpolate  our 
gravitational  and  electrical  systems.  We  discover  their  prop- 
erties and  mathematical  form.  In  mental  systems,  we  have 
again  a  unique  reality  which  we  must  try  to  understand.  Only 
in  such  systems  is  the  ensemble  of  properties  known  as  values 
possible.  These  systems  are  indisputably  real  when  they 
exist,  and  are  irreducible  to  other  systems.  They  are  "the 
master  light  of  all  our  seeing." 

In  these  conscious  mental  continuities,  reality  reveals  to  us, 
not  only  the  formal  relations  which  we  discover  and  retrace 
as  truth,  but  the  demand  for  justice,  the  property  to  have 
mercy,  the  response  of  beauty.  This  is  true  not  only  in  our 
human  relations,  but  still  more  in  those  higher  continuities 
which  we  call  communion  with  God.  These  higher  contexts 
must  be  taken  to  reveal  the  nature  of  reality,  quite  as  truly 
as  the  simpler  contexts  which  we  deal  with  in  mechanics.  Each 
system  makes  its  own  unique  creative  contribution;  each 
system  furnishes  a  solution  in  which  reality  shows  more  of  its 
reactive  properties.  Thus  electrical  systems  reveal  properties 
which  lie  outside  our  material  systems.  In  the  chemistry  of 
the  organic  systems,  we  find  marvelous  powers  of  assimilation 
and  response,  which,  so  far,  lie  beyond  our  artificial  imitation. 
In  our  mental  systems,  with  their  greater  capacity  for  storing 
up  potential  energy  in  the  way  of  inhibitions  and  facilitations 
of  behavior,  this  complexity  of  properties  increases  still  more. 
It  is  here  that  the  unique  responses  of  value  arise  as  creative 
additions  to  our  world.  These  are  as  much  a  part  of  the 
reality  of  the  world  as  the  chemical  responses.  They  constitute 
for  us  its  choicest  part.  The  universe,  in  its  varying  systems 
of  creativeness,  calls  to  our  mind  the  Chinese  swallow  which 
gives  us  our  edible  nests.  First  it  produces  a  nest  of  largely 
external  material  and  contributes  but  little  of  its  substance  to 
the  frame.  In  its  second  building,  after  being  deprived  of  its 
first  nest,  it  labors  harder  and  secretes  more  of  itself.  In  the 


PRAGMATIC   ENERGISM  61 

third  nest,  in  the  pain  and  anxiety  of  frustration,  it  yields  up 
its  very  lifeblood  and  colors  the  nest  with  its  crimson.  So  in 
the  rare  solutions  of  our  intense  emotional  excitement,  the 
energy  of  the  universe,  in  the  pain  and  stress  of  clashing  interests 
and  the  threatened  defeat  of  its  ideal  instincts,  contributes  its 
very  soul  as  it  labors  to  give  birth  to  new  values,  and  colors 
the  gray  world  of  matter  with  its  rainbow  glory.  Here  the 
systems  of  the  universe  not  only  exist  but  have  significance. 

And  who  shall  say  that  our  limited  mental  systems  are  the 
last  word  of  reality's  revelation?  The  energy  which  shows  its 
marvelous  properties  in  all  these  systems  and  which,  even  in 
the  simplest,  reveals  a  sublimity  which  humbles  our  power  and 
insight,  may  well  be  capable  of  higher  creative  syntheses,  more 
comprehensive  actualities  and  insights  than  those  associated 
with  our  organisms  and  our  social  institutions.  That  such  a 
synthesis  is  real,  we  have  an  intimation  in  the  vast  correlative 
adjustments  of  nature  of  which  we  get  glimpses  in  science,  and 
in  those  instinctive  demands  for  harmony  and  beauty  which 
make  themselves  but  feebly  felt  in  us.  We  can  see  and  appre- 
ciate but  piecemeal  and  in  the  dark  glass  of  our  prejudices. 
The  directive  power  of  the  universe  of  which  we  have  intima- 
tions in  our  higher  continuities  no  doubt  has  a  more  adequate 
way.  In  the  meantime  we  must  have  faith  in  our  own  insight, 
relative  though  it  be. 

In  this  brief  survey  of  energy,  we  have  implied  throughout 
other  categories  than  energy  properties.  Only  so  could  we 
understand  energy  in  action  or  as  doing  work.  Otherwise 
it  would  be  congealed,  —  frozen  energy.  We  have  implied 
geometrical  properties  and  time  properties  which  must  figure 
in  energy  systems.  We  have  also  implied  form,  without 
which  energy  systems  would  be  unstatable.  Elsewhere  we  have 
given  more  adequate  consideration  to  these  characteristics. 
We  must  here  turn  to  a  further  analysis  of  energy  properties, 
as  they  appear  in  the  world  of  things  and  minds. 


CHAPTER  IV 
Do  THINGS  EXIST? 

AT  first  sight  nothing  could  seem  more  obvious  than  that 
things,  individual  blocks,  exist.  In  fact,  that  things  exist  as 
individual  and  distinct  has  seemed  far  clearer  to  common  sense 
than  that  minds  are  individual.  We  have  only  to  recollect 
that  Aristotle  found  mind  (active  nous)  impersonal  and  uni- 
versal, while  the  body,  with  the  functions  depending  upon  it, 
seemed  to  furnish  the  individual  substrate,  and  that  Thomas 
Aquinas  made  the  body  the  principle  of  individuation,  without 
which  human  souls,  like  the  angels,  would  merge  into  the  genus. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  say  that  philosophy  has  changed  front  in 
this  respect,  and  finds  it  comparatively  easy  to  recognize  the 
individuality  of  minds,  while  the  independence  and  individuality 
of  things  has  well-nigh  disappeared  in  the  general  continuum. 

The  Antipathy  to  Things 

There  have  been  several  motives  for  this  attitude  towards 
the  reality  of  things.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  mention  that 
of  temperamental  mysticism,  which  will  always  seek  reality  in 
haziness  and  away  from  distinctions.  Our  going  into  a  trance 
or  going  to  sleep  does  obliterate  plurality  so  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned. But  while  it  does  away  with  the  significance  of  dis- 
tinctions for  the  dreamer,  does  it  also  do  away  with  the  existence 
of  distinctions?  I  do  not  believe  so.  I  cannot  help  feeling 
that  we  are  wiser  when  we  are  awake  than  when  we  are  asleep, 
and  that  reality  is  such  as  we  must  take  it  in  our  systematic 
conduct.  I  would  rather  trust  the  tried-out  distinctions  of 
common  sense  and  science  than  the  dreamy  confluence  of 
mysticism. 

Our  antipathy  to  distinctions,  however,  may  not  be  due 
merely  to  temperamental  laziness.  It  may  be  due  to  conceptual 

62 


DO   THINGS  EXIST?  63 

difficulties.  Thus  the  difficulties  of  conceiving  plural  things  and 
their  interactions  in  space  lead  Lotze  to  conceive  the  universe 
as  a  polyphonic  unity  —  an  "  aesthetic  unity  of  purpose  in  the 
world  which,  as  in  some  work  of  art,  combines  with  convincing 
justice  things  which  in  their  isolation  would  seem  incoherent 
and  scarcely  to  stand  in  any  relation  to  one  another  at  all."  l 
Bradley,  in  a  similar  way,  having  found  the  problem  of  relations 
and  of  motion  insuperable  on  his  abstract  basis  of  procedure, 
has  recourse  to  an  aesthetic  absolute  where  the  plurality  of 
things  and  their  ceaseless  struggle  is  at  rest.  I  cannot  see, 
however,  how  we  are  justified  in  reading  plurality  out  of  the 
world  because  its  existence  interferes  with  our  ready-made 
concepts.  New  concepts,  perhaps  the  electrical  definition  of 
physical  atoms,  may  make  it  easier  to  see  how  a  world  of 
relatively  stable  things  may  coexist  and  interact.  In  the  mean- 
time, if  we  must  acknowledge  diversity  of  things  for  purposes 
of  conduct,  we  must  hold  that  they  have  some  distinct  reality, 
even  while  we  are  perfecting  our  conceptual  models.  In  any 
case,  thought  must  wait  upon  facts.  Where  we  find  symphonic 
unity  of  system,  there  we  must  of  course  acknowledge  it.  But 
when  the  facts  do  not  warrant  such  intimate  unity,  we  have 
no  right  to  read  it  into  them  on  the  basis  of  a  priori  conceptions. 
Even  within  our  own  individual  history,  we  are  far  from  find- 
ing a  closely  woven  purposive  unity.  We  are  the  creatures 
largely  of  habit  and  instinct.  We  must  provisionally  acknowl- 
edge different  types  of  continuity  of  which  unity  of  purpose  is 
only  one. 

The  intellectualist's  condemnation  of  things  owes  its  con- 
vincingness to  certain  deep-rooted  prejudices.  One  of  these 
prejudices  is  that  individuality  means  indivisibility,  and  con- 
versely that  what  can  be  divided  into  parts  cannot  be  individ- 
ual. The  substance  of  Spinoza  and  the  atoms  of  Democritus 
are  alike  indivisible.  This  difficulty  of  indecomposability 
would  of  course  equally  influence  our  view  of  psychic  unities. 
We  would  have  to  deny  the  reality  of  the  self,  because  it  is 
complex  and  capable  of  analysis.  The  art  object  would  fall 
to  pieces  the  moment  we  analyzed  it.  Hence  you  have  either 
a  heap  of  pieces  on  the  one  hand  or  a  mystical,  undifferentiated 

1 "  Metaphysics,"  English  translation,  Vol.  II,  p.  60. 


64  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

unity  on  the  other.  Now,  what  we  must  do  here  is  to  face  the 
problem  honestly  and  cast  out  prejudice.  We  can,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  recognize  a  self  or  a  work  of  art  as  a  unity,  if  the  com- 
plexity converges  in  a  direction  or  towards  a  purpose.  If  in 
the  organic  or  inorganic  thing  we  can  recognize  a  common  im- 
pulse or  movement,  we  must  recognize  the  thing  as  one,  even 
though  it  is  complex  and  physically  divisible. 

This  prejudice  is  closely  connected  with  another  —  the  vice 
of  abstraction,  useful  though  abstraction  is  in  its  own  place 
in  the  economy  of  thought.  This  prejudice  consists  in  empha- 
sizing the  disjunctive  function  of  the  mind  and  in  ignoring 
the  conjunctive.  Thus  it  is  regarded  as  self-evident  that  the 
disparate  qualities  —  the  creatures  of  linguistic  substantiation 
—  exist ;  but  their  interpenetration,  their  coexistence  in  the 
one  thing,  is  regarded  as  the  insuperable  problem.  And  it  is 
insuperable,  if  you  take  the  disparate  abstractions  for  granted 
and  try  to  compound  a  thing  out  of  them.  But  this  is  starting 
at  the  wrong  end  of  the  process.  We  must  go  back  to  the 
concrete  object.  While  our  thought  can  abstract  qualities, 
these  qualities  do  not  exist  first  as  abstract  entities  and  then 
compound  themselves.  They  are  ways  of  taking  things  in 
concrete  contexts.  If  we  can  discriminate  distinctions  within 
the  object,  it  is  quite  true  that  we  must  regard  such  distinctions 
as  real.  But  if  we  must  take  the  distinctions  as  coexisting, 
interpenetrating,  flowing  into  each  other,  cohering  in  one  pat- 
tern and  movement,  it  is  also  true  that  they  can  so  interpene- 
trate and  coexist.  Our  conjunctive  way  of  taking  the  object 
of  experience  needs  no  more  justification  than  our  disjunctive 
or  analytic  way.  If  the  distinctions  do  coexist  and  interpene- 
trate, they  can  do  so.  We  do  not  make  the  transitions  or 
unities,  any  more  than  the  discreteness,  in  taking  account  of 
them.  And  Berkeley  is  quite  right  in  maintaining  that  no 
additional  entity,  no  substance,  or  x,  can  simplify  the  fact, 
which  is  given  with  the  qualities,  viz.  that  they  interpenetrate 
and  persist.  To  trace  these  coexistences  and  transitions  of 
the  facts  of  experience  is  the  business  of  science,  quite  as  much 
as  that  of  the  analysis  of  properties. 

It  is  strange  that  the  unity  of  the  thing  should  have  caused 
so  much  trouble,  while  most  philosophers  have  been  willing  to 


DO  THINGS  EXIST?  65 

take  the  diversity  within  the  thing  for  granted.  I  cannot  see 
why  one  is  not  as  mysterious  or  as  clear  as  the  other.  If  you 
assume  that  a  thing  is  mere  abstract  unity,  it  is  true  that  no 
logic  could  get  diversity  out  of  it.  If,  again,  you  start  with  a 
collection  of  independent,  disparate  qualities,  it  will  no  doubt 
be  impossible  to  get  any  unity  into  it.  The  simpler  way  is  to 
proceed  empirically  and  not  to  make  absurd  assumptions.  If 
we  can  distinguish  diversity  of  function,  then,  of  course,  there 
is  diversity.  If  diversity  of  function,  on  the  other  hand, 
makes  a  thing  go  to  pieces,  if  the  only  transitions  possible  are 
those  of  identity  of  property,  then  we  should  at  least  be  as 
consistent  as  the  father  of  intellectualism,  Parmenides,  and 
with  him  rule  out  all  diversity  as  inconceivable,  leaving  the 
residuum  of  the  homogeneous  block  of  "  being." 

Another  intellectualist  prejudice  of  which  we  must  rid  our- 
selves is  the  assumption  that  an  individual,  in  order  to  be 
distinct,  must  distinguish  itself.  On  this  basis,  only  self-con- 
scious individuals  could  exist,  and  they  only  so  long  as  they  are 
self-conscious.  We  ourselves  would  vanish  as  individuals  the 
moment  we  go  to  sleep  or  when  our  interest  becomes  absorbed 
in  the  objective  situation.  I  do  not  believe  this  a  valid  as- 
sumption. Neither  the  existence  nor  the  significance  of  an 
individual  need  depend  upon  self -discrimination.  We  have 
individual  significance  so  long  as  any  experience  distinguishes 
us,  whether  we  are  awake  or  asleep.  And  the  existence  of  an 
individual  is  in  no  wise  dependent  upon  being  distinguished. 
A  thing  may  exist  as  individual  a  million  years  before  it 
is  distinguished.  It  is  individual  not  because  it  distinguishes 
itself  or  we  distinguish  it,  but  because,  when  we  do  take  account 
of  it,  we  must  treat  it  as  distinct  for  the  purpose  in  question. 

Nor  is  it  necessary  to  regard  self -subsistence  or  independence 
as  the  condition  of  reality.  If  only  the  self-subsistent  were 
real,  then  only  an  indivisible  whole,  as  Spinoza  maintains, 
could  be  real.  Now,  it  is  quite  true  that  the  parts  must,  some- 
how, hang  together.  At  least  the  physical  world  hangs  to- 
gether by  its  gravitational  threads.  But  such  hanging  together 
need  not  prevent  a  certain  individual  play  of  the  parts.  The 
earth  hangs  together  with  the  solar  system,  but  that  does  not 
prevent  the  earth  from  having  its  own  motion  and  history. 


66  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

For  finite  purposes  at  least,  it  is  convenient  to  take  reality 
piecemeal.  And  reality  has  parts  and  distinctions  ;just  in  so 
far  as  it  lends  itself  to  such  individual  taking,  however  much 
the  parts  may  cohere  with  a  larger  pattern.  It  is  such  plural- 
ism which  makes  practical  adjustment  and  scientific  sorting 
and  identification  relevant.  The  parts  or  aspects  kre  real,  if 
we  must  meet  them  as  real.  And  the  recognition  of  the  char- 
acter and  reality  of  the  part  may,  for  the  purpose  in  question, 
be  more  essential  than  the  reality  of  the  whole. 

It  is  not  necessary,  on  the  other  hand,  in  order  to  recognize 
the  plurality  of  the  world,  to  fall  into  the  opposite  intellectualist 
abstraction,  that  of  absolutely  independent  plural  entities 
such  as  the  old-fashioned  atoms  or  monads.  Such  an  assump- 
tion is  necessarily  suicidal,  for  since  such  entities  could  not 
make  any  difference  to  each  other  or  to  any  perceiving  subject, 
it  becomes  impossible  to  speak  of  them  as  having  properties 
or  even  to  prove  their  existence.  Even  zero  must  be  part  of  a 
thought  context  in  order  to  be  considered  as  existing.  Things 
are  as  independent  and  impenetrable  as  we  must  take  them. 
They  may  exist,  as  we  have  seen,  independent  of  our  cognitive 
context.  They  may  come  and  go,  so  far  as  our  awareness  is 
concerned,  without  prejudice  to  their  existence.  But  in  some 
context  they  must  hang.  I  cannot  conceive  of  individuals  as 
outside  of  any  context  at  all,  as  making  no  difference  to  other 
individuals,  for  it  is  through  such  difference  to  other  individuals, 
and  in  the  last  analysis  to  human  nature,  that  we  conceive  of 
an  individual  as  existing  at  all.  I  can  see  only  the  possibility 
of  a  relative  pluralism  —  pluralism  with  its  rough  edges,  its 
overlapping  identities  —  both  from  the  existential  and  the 
cognitive  side.  No  center  liveth  unto  itself,  in  the  isolated 
sense  of  Leibniz's  monad.  But  such  relative  pluralism  prevents 
in  any  case  the  blank  monotony  of  Eleatic  "  being."  And  while 
the  parts  hang  with  each  other,  they  must  be  considered  as  real  as 
the  whole.  The  whole  has  no  reality  abstracted  from  just  such 
parts.  If  the  parts  are  relative  to  the  whole,  the  whole  is  no 
less  relative  to  the  parts.  If  we  emphasize  that  individuals  exist 
and  have  significance  only  in  contexts,  it  is  well  not  to  forget 
that  they  do  exist  within  the  contexts,  social  or  physical,  and  can 
be  identified  in  the  variety  of  contexts  into  which  they  enter. 


DO   THINGS  EXIST?  67 

Another  and  more  serious  kind  of  objection  has  been  raised 
against  the  reality  of  things  from  the  Heraclitean  point  of 
view,  represented  so  brilliantly  at  the  present  time  by  Professor 
Bergson.  If  the  universe  is  an  absolute  flux,  making  sections 
in  the  stream  of  change  and  calling  them  things  must  be  a 
purely  artificial  attitude  —  an  illusion  due  to  our  gross  sense 
perception  at  best  and  justified  only  by  its  convenience  for 
practical  purposes.  To  quote  a  recent  statement  of  Bergson's  : 
"I  regard  the  whole  parceling  out  of  things  as  relative  to  our 
faculty  of  perception.  Our  senses,  adjusted  to  the  material 
world,  trace  there  lines  of  division  which  exist  as  directions, 
carved  out  for  our  future  action.  It  is  our  contingent  action 
which  is  reflected  back  in  matter,  as  in  a  mirror,  when  our  eyes 
perceive  objects  with  well-marked  contours,  and  distinguish 
them  one  from  the  other."  1  Things,  therefore,  have  no  real 
existence.  They  are  due  merely  to  our  practical  purposes. 
The  real  world  is  one  of  absolute  fluency,  where  the  past  is 
drawn  up  into  the  moving  flow.  Not  extension,  but  interpene- 
tration ;  not  repetition,  but  absolute  novelty  and  growth ;  not 
qualities,  but  change,  characterize  the  real  world,  the  key  to 
which  must  be  found  in  our  own  stream  of  consciousness.  This 
real  world  can  be  grasped,  not  by  the  intellect,  but  by  intuition, 
which  gives  us  the  real  flow,  as  contrasted  with  the  stereotyped 
copy  of  the  intellect.  And  how  do  we  come  to  speak  of  things 
at  all,  then  ?  By  means  of  the  intellect  we  form  a  space  image 
of  the  real  process.  This  image  is  like  the  cinematographic 
copy  of  moving  figures.  It  is  a  static  picture  of  spatially 
spread  out  and  recorded  changes  which  we  substitute  for  the 
real  duration.  But  while  the  latter  is  characterized  by  inter- 
penetration  and  indivisibility,  the  former  is  characterized  by 
extension  and  divisibility.  Science  decomposes  the  objects  of 
sense  still  further  into  molecules  and  atoms  and  centers  of 
force,  but  these  pictures  of  science  have  no  more  reality  than 
the  perceptual  things.  They  are  merely  contrivances  to  deal 
with  the  world  of  flux. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  view  of  Bergson,  and  it  certainly  carries 
with  it  a  great  deal  of  truth.  Our  purposes  are  indispensable 
in  the  significant  differentiation  of  our  world ;  and  sometimes, 

1  Jour.  Phil.  Psychol.  and  Sri.  Meth.,  Vol.  VII,  No.  14,  pp.  386  and  387. 


68  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

no  doubt,  our  marking  the  world  off  into  parts  is  as  artificial 
as  the  astronomer's  longitudes  and  latitudes  and  his  names  for 
constellations.  The  world,  too,  from  our  finite  point  of  view 
at  any  rate,  is  a  world  where  novelty  and  growth  play  an  im- 
portant part.  I  cannot  admit,  however,  that  the  new  Heracli- 
teanism  gives  us  the  whole  truth. 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  be  suspicious  of  all  absolutistic 
formulas.  Absolute  flux  is  as  impossible  of  proof  as  absolute 
identity.  Bergson  and  Parmenides  alike  must  found  their 
philosophy  on  intuition  and  conviction.  I  prefer  the  more 
modest  pragmatic  way  of  taking  the  world.1  This  means  to 
take  the  facts  at  their  face  value.  If  there  seems  to  be  change 
and  novelty,  then,  in  so  far,  we  must  own  it,  whether  our 
novelty  is  a  retracing  of  an  absolute  experience  or  is  objectively 
creative.  Knowledge,  whatever  claims  to  absoluteness  we 
may  make,  is  after  all  our  finite  human  version  of  reality; 
and  we  have  access  to  no  other.  And  for  us  change  and  novelty 
are  real  facts.  But  while  we  must  recognize  novelty  and  inter- 
penetration  as  facts  of  our  experience,  it  is  also  true  that  we 
must  recognize  a  certain  amount  of  constancy.  And  this 
constancy  cannot  be  due  merely  to  language  and  space  objecti- 
fication.  There  must,  on  the  one  hand,  be  constancy  in  our 
meanings,  our  inner  purposes;  and  they  are  real  processes. 
And  there  must,  on  the  other,  be  constancy  on  the  part  of  the 
processes  referred  to.  Else  constancy  on  the  part  of  our 
symbols  would  not  avail.  Suppose  we  had  a  world  where 
everything  flowed  but  the  symbols :  in  such  a  world  we  could 
not  recognize  or  use  the  symbols  as  the  same.  There  could 
be  no  such  thing  as  intellect  in  such  a  world,  because  it,  too, 
would  have  to  change.  And  even  if  memories  and  concepts 
dipped  into  such  a  world  from  another  universe,  they  would 
be  utterly  useless  where  nothing  repeats  itself.  The  intellect 
is  an  agency  for  prediction ;  and  what  we  must  be  able  to 
predict  is  the  real  world  of  processes.  Mind  and  things  must 
conspire  to  have  science.  Even  in  the  cinematograph,  you 
have  the  constancy  of  the  pictures  and  of  the  machinery  which 
repeats  them ;  and  they  are  part  of  the  real  world. 

1  My  attitude  to  pragmatism  I  have  explained  in  "Truth  and  Reality," 
Macmillan,  1911,  especially  in  Chapters  IX  and  X. 


DO   THINGS  EXIST?  69 

Nor  is  it  true  of  things,  any  more  than  of  selves,  that  our 
marking  them  off  from  their  context  is  purely  arbitrary.  It  is 
difficult  enough  in  either  case ;  and  we  cannot  pull  them,  root 
and  all,  without  pulling  a  good  deal  of  the  context  with  them. 
When  we  come  to  define  what  we  mean  by  Caesar,  we  find  that 
he  is  very  much  entangled  with  the  past  out  of  which  he 
grew,  with  the  age  in  which  he  struggled,  and  with  the  results 
and  opinions  of  his  labors  ever  since.  Yet  for  all  that  he  is  a 
well-marked  character  which  we  can  understand  and  appreciate. 
So  with  the  thing  —  the  organic  individual,  like  the  tree,  or 
the  inorganic  individual,  like  the  stone  or  the  crystal.  In  any 
case,  they  are  individual,  when  we  must  deal  with  them  as 
such;  not  when  we  mark  them  off  arbitrarily,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  rainbow.  And  this  is  true  though  the  individual  is 
complex ;  though  it  may  consist  of  many  interpenetrating  im- 
pulses, all  traveling  at  diverse  paces. 

The  Pragmatic  Significance  of  Things 

When  we  come  to  define  what  we  mean  by  the  individuality 
of  a  thing,  the  problem  waxes  more  difficult.  Psychology 
gives  us  but  scant  help.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  tended 
to  unfit  us  for  the  proper  attitude  to  reality  through  its  sub- 
jectivistic  tendency.  What  we  intend  when  we  speak  of  a 
thing  or  act  on  a  thing  is  not  a  fusion  of  sensations,  together 
with  the  suggested  sensory  and  ideational  complex.  This  is 
merely  an  account  of  the  process  of  becoming  aware  of  things 
and  not  an  account  of  the  reality  of  things.  Things  can  make 
sensible  differences  to  our  organism,  but  they  are  not  constituted 
by  our  perception.  They  must  be  taken  as  preexisting  in  their 
own  contexts,  prior  to  such  sensory  discrimination  on  our  part, 
else  our  instincts  would  not  be  adjusted  to  them ;  they  could 
fulfill  no  interest  or  need  on  the  part  of  our  will.  The  sensory 
differences,  for  practical  purposes,  exist  primarily  as  signs  or 
guides  suggesting  further  control  and  use.  The  sight  sensa- 
tions, in  the  case  of  the  infant,  suggest  the  motor  reaction  of 
active  touch,  which  in  turn  suggests  the  reflexes  of  eating. 

What,  then,  individuates  things?  First  of  all,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  significance,  they  are  individuated,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  the  purposes  which  select  them  and  which  they  fulfill. 


70  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

They  would  have  no  individual  significance  except  as  thus 
differentiated  in  our  cognitive  experience.  The  thing  must 
embody  a  will.  Aristotle  was  quite  right  in  saying  that  we 
cannot  treat  the  thing  as  a  mere  collection.  We  cannot 
regard  the  word  as  a  mere  collection  of  letters,  in  so  far 
as  it  is  an  individual  word.  "We  must  seek  the  cause  by 
reason  of  which  the  matter  is  some  definite  thing."  1  For 
Aristotle  this  means  finding  the  final  cause  of  the  thing.  In 
artificial  things  like  the  word  or  the  work  of  art,  it  is  quite 
plain  that  we  must  find  the  idea  which  is  expressed.  Can  we 
also  find  such  an  objective  idea  in  natural  things?  No,  we 
cannot  find  it  there.  We  must  be  satisfied  if  it  has  such  dis- 
tinctness of  character  and  history  as  to  fulfill  a  specific  purpose 
of  ours,  whether  it  sustains  the  relation  of  a  work  of  art  to  a 
more  comprehensive  experience  or  not. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  things  are  created  or  "  faked  " 
by  thus  being  taken  over  into  our  cognitive  context.  The  selec- 
tion and  acknowledgment  is  forced,  not  arbitrary.  The  thing 
must  suggest  an  own  center  of  energy.  It  must  roll  out  from 
the  larger  field  of  experience,  forcing  attention  to  its  own  move- 
ment and  identity.  Our  cognitive  meaning,  so  far  from  con- 
stituting things,  must  tally  with  the  things  —  terminate  in  our 
perceptions  of  them  —  in  order  to  be  valid.  If  the  thing  is 
real,  it  cannot  be  infinitely  divisible,  i.e.  the  form  of  the  thing 
cannot  be  merely  of  our  own  choosing.  To  be  accorded  objec- 
tive existence,  the  thing  must  be  acknowledged  as  having  its 
own  impulse,  its  own  history,  its  own  pattern  of  parts,  which 
our  ideas  must  copy  sufficiently  for  identification  and  prediction. 
And  the  thing  may  have  to  be  acknowledged  as  having  such 
character  and  history,  whether  as  old  as  the  sun  or  as  evanescent 
as  the  cloudlet. 

Can  we  identify  such  things  in  our  experience?  In  the  case 
of  the  organic  thing,  we  seem  to  have  a  natural  unity,  com- 
parable to  that  which  we  have  in  the  case  of  the  unity  of  the 
ego,  even  though  the  former  is  not  a  significant  unity.  There 
is  a  history  which  embodies  a  certain  end  or  has  a  certain  direc- 
tion. To  be  sure,  organisms  may  sometimes  be  divided  without 
destroying  their  life;  and  the  lower  organisms  do  propagate 
i  "Metaphysics,"  Bk.  VII,  Ch.  XVII,  1. 


DO   THINGS  EXIST?  71 

their  existence  by  spontaneous  division.  But  the  cell  seems 
to  be  even  here  a  fairly  definite  entity.  The  unicellular  or- 
ganisms have  an  individual  immortality  which  is  only  limited 
by  external  accident. 

When  we  come  to  inorganic  things,  the  problem  is  difficult. 
On  the  analogy  of  geometrical  quantity  it  has  sometimes  been 
held  that  physical  things  are  infinitely  divisible.  Interesting 
antinomies  have  been  invented  from  Zeno  down  by  playing 
between  the  mathematical  and  the  physical  conception  of 
quantity.  But  we  must  not  confuse  mathematical  divisibility 
with  physical  divisibility.  Empirically,  what  we  call  things 
are,  on  the  one  hand,  capable  of  being  taken  as  individuals. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  possible  to  distinguish  parts.  Do  we 
come  to  a  limit  in  our  division  where  we  have  to  deal  with  a 
final  natural  unity?  We  do  for  practical  purposes  at  least. 
The  molecule,  which,  thanks  to  Perron,  has  now  been  definitely 
identified  and  measured,  seems  like  a  distinct  stopping  place, 
if  we  would  preserve  the  character  of  the  compound.  And  in 
recent  years  interesting  experiments  have  been  made  by  Ruther- 
ford and  others  to  prove  the  real  existence  of  the  atom.  These 
results  cannot  be  ruled  out  by  any  a  priori  theory  as  regards 
infinite  divisibility.  The  atom  in  turn  seems  to  be  a  holding 
company  for  energies  which  under  certain  conditions  can  act 
individually.  A  smaller  unit,  the  electron,  it  has  been  shown, 
must  be  assumed  to  account  for  such  phenomena  as  radio- 
activity. The  negative  electric  charge  seems  like  a  natural 
unit.  Is  it  final?  We  cannot  say.  All  we  can  say  is  that 
we  have  had  no  need  so  far  of  assuming  a  smaller  unit.  There 
certainly  is  no  evidence  for  infinite  divisibility.  Furthermore, 
because  units  do  not  have  absolute  permanency  and  are  them- 
selves complex,  that  does  not  gainsay  their  individual  reality, 
while  we  can  take  them  as  individual.  The  chair  is  an  individ- 
ual while  we  can  use  it  as  a  chair,  however  complex  and  un- 
stable its  structure. 

It  will  be  seen  that  we  have  adopted  the  instrumental  method 
in  dealing  with  the  reality  of  the  thing.  Unlike  the  self,  the 
thing  has  no  meaning  or  value  that  we  can  share  with  it.  We 
must  judge  it,  therefore,  by  the  ways  in  which  we  must  take 
it  in  realizing  our  purposes ;  and  we  must  hold  that  its  reality 


72  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

is  precisely  what  we  must  take  it  as  in  the  service  of  our  specific 
will.  Let  us  now  try  to  sum  up  the  pragmatic  significance  of 
the  thing.  In  the  first  place,  we  have  seen  that  we  cannot 
speak  of  things  unless  we  have  persistent  identity  —  identity 
both  in  the  purposes  which  take  the  things  and  in  the  objective 
processes  which  are  taken.  Unless  we  can  take  the  same 
processes  over  again  and  thus  predict  their  recurrence,  we 
cannot  speak  of  things.  In  a  world  of  absolute  flux,  not  even 
the  illusion  of  a  thing  could  arise.  This  persistence  or  possi- 
bility of  identification  of  certain  processes  is  the  pragmatic 
significance  of  substance,  whatever  fleeting  changes  we  may 
have  to  ignore  in  our  conceptual  taking  of  reality.  As  the 
thing  is  capable  of  existing  in  many  contexts,  and  as  it  may 
have  different  reactions  in  different  contexts,  the  idea  of  po- 
tential energy  arises.  The  potential,  or  the  core  of  the  thing, 
is  the  more  of  what  the  thing  can  do.  The  air  can  produce 
sound.  It  can  also  furnish  the  prairie  dust  storm,  it  can  convey 
oxygen  to  the  lungs,  etc.  As  the  contexts  are  not  present, 
perhaps,  for  doing  all  these  things  at  once,  we  speak  of  the 
others  as  possible  reactions  —  the  (for  the  time  being)  hidden 
energy  of  the  thing. 

In  the  second  place,  these  expectancies  or  ways  of  taking  the 
thing  are  social.  Things  do  not  merely  figure  in  my  individual 
experience,  but  they  are  capable  of  figuring  in  any  number  of 
experiences  in  the  same  immediate  way.  They  fulfill  not 
merely  an  individual,  but  a  social,  purpose.  One  reason  for 
regarding  social  experience  as  more  trustworthy  is  that  social 
experience  is  less  subject  to  illusions  and  hallucinations.  While 
this  is  largely  so  and  therefore  furnishes  an  additional  check, 
illusions  and  hallucinations  may  be  social  for  the  time  being. 
The  illusion  of  the  moving  railroad  train  is  as  social  as  any 
perception.  A  whole  crowd  has  been  known  to  see  a  ghost. 
So  being  social  is  not  an  infallible  test  of  objectivity.  As  such 
perceptions,  however,  do  not  tally  with  further  experiences, 
they  cannot  be  taken  as  things.  Whether  we  deal  with  things, 
therefore,  from  the  point  of  view  of  individual  or  of  social  ex- 
perience, our  ideas  of  things  can  only  be  proven  true  as  expe- 
rience leans  upon  further  experience  in  a  consistent  way. 

It  has  sometimes  been  stated  that  things  are  objective,  be- 


DO   THINGS  EXIST?  73 

cause  they  are  objects  for  several  subjects.  But  this  is  invert- 
ing the  true  relation.  Things  are  social  experiences,  because 
they  hang  in  a  context  of  their  own  and  are  not  dependent 
upon  individual  experience  for  their  existence.  Things,  more- 
over, are  not  the  only  objects  of  social  experience.  It  is  not 
true  that  our  psychological  objects  are  objects  of  one  subject 
only  as  contrasted  with  things.  If  so,  we  could  have  no  psycho- 
logical sciences.  We  could  never  understand  each  other's 
meanings  or  their  relations.  The  fact  is  that  we  can  share 
each  other's  images,  concepts,  and  even  emotions,  and  will 
attitudes,  as  truly  as  our  sense  facts.  The  oldest  sciences 
man  created  were  sciences  of  meaning,  such  as  logic,  geometry, 
and  ethics.  It  is  absurd,  then,  to  say  that  mental  facts  exist 
for  one  subject  only  —  are  private  and  unique.  It  is  not  their 
social  character  which  distinguishes  things  from  meanings. 

Besides  social  agreement,  we  must  add,  therefore,  sensible 
continuity  as  characteristic  of  our  taking  of  things.  Things 
are  the  sensible  embodiments  of  purposes.  They  have  a  cer- 
tain "liveliness"  that  our  meanings  as  such,  however  social, 
do  not  ordinarily  have.  They  are  energies  which  we  must 
recognize  as  belonging  to  a  space  context  of  their  own,  with 
their  own  steadiness  and  order,  independent  of  our  meanings. 
It  is  not  that  we,  either  in  our  individual  or  our  social  capacity, 
do  acknowledge  things,  which  makes  things  objective,  but  that 
we  must  acknowledge  them,  and  that  we  must  acknowledge 
them  as  having  such  a  sensible  character,  such  motion,  such 
use  in  the  realization  of  our  specific  purposes.  Our  ideas  must 
terminate  in  the  sensible  things  in  order  to  be  valid.  We  may 
select  them  in  our  service,  we  may  spread  them  out  into  our 
classificatory  schemes,  we  may  symbolize  their  relations  by 
our  equations ;  but  we  can  do  so  successfully  only  by  respect- 
ing their  own  character  and  relations  as  revealed  in  experience. 
We  must  believe,  moreover,  that  the  substance  of  things  is 
precisely  what  we  must  take  it  as  in  experience.  If  radium 
breaks  down  and  changes  into  helium,  no  assumption  of  inert 
matter,  no  postulate  of  substance,  can  guarantee  its  identity. 
The  only  key  we  have  to  reality  is  what  reality  must  be  taken 
as  in  the  progressive  realization  of  the  purposes  of  human 
nature. 


CHAPTER  V 
KNOWING  THINGS 


IN  dealing  with  things  as  known,  we  place  ourselves  at  once 
at  the  pragmatic  point  of  view  —  things  as  they  must  be 
taken  in  our  systematic  experience.  In  other  words,  we  try 
to  unlock  the  reality  of  things  by  means  of  their  qualities,  as 
we  must  adjust  ourselves  to  them.  This  pragmatic  way  of 
taking  things  has  at  least  the  advantage  of  convenience.  It 
is  the  only  approach,  whether  it  is  the  whole  truth  or  not. 
And  by  qualities  we  mean  the  constant  and  describable  ways 
in  which  we  must  take  nature  in  its  concrete  contexts.  They 
are  differentiated  and  made  significant  through  the  specific 
conduct  which  we  must  adopt  in  varying  situations,  —  sen- 
sory, chemical,  electrical,  etc.  They  are  diverse  or  homogeneous 
just  in  so  far  as  we  must  take  them  as  such. 

We  must  distinguish  the  relation  of  a  thing  to  its  qualities 
from  other  forms  of  diversity  and  unity.1  We  must  not  con- 
fuse qualities  with  logical  consequences,  which  exist  only  as 
part  of  a  cognitive  context;  nor  must  we  confuse  qualities 
with  the  species  of  a  genus,  for  the  qualities  cannot  be  regarded 
as  existing  individually  apart  from  their  complex.  We  can- 
not regard  the  qualities  as  effects  of  the  thing,  because  the 
thing  apart  from  the  qualities  is  a  mere  abstraction.  We 
cannot  regard  the  qualities  as  external  parts  of  a  whole,  be- 
cause the  qualities  only  exist  as  interpenetrating  in  one  dynamic 
context.  The  thing  is  not  the  sum  of  our  abstractions,  such  as 
independent  qualities  would  have  to  be.  Nor  are  the  qualities, 
as  sometimes  stated,  the  behavior  of  the  thing;  they  must 

1  See  in  this  connection  a  suggestive  monograph,  "Om  Egenskapen,"  by  a 
Swedish  philosopher,  Pontus  Wikner,  whom  I  count  as  one  of  the  noblest 
thinkers  of  my  native  land. 

74 


KNOWING  THINGS  75 

include  how  the  thing  can  behave  under  definite  conditions  as 
well  as  its  actual  behavior.  They  are  not  the  behavior  in  the 
abstract,  but  what  a  thing  must  be  taken  as,  or  acknowledged, 
in  its  specific  conduct.  Qualities  are  not  inert  ideas,  as  Berkeley 
supposes,  but  energies  that  can  be  tapped  under  definite  con- 
ditions. 

Qualities,  are  not  merely  the  actual,  but  also  the  potential 
energies  of  things,  their  possible  differences  to  other  contexts. 
When  we  see  the  diamond,  we  expect  it  also  to  cut  glass,  though 
the  visual  qualities  do  not  cut  glass.  Where  the  conception  of 
quality  becomes  particularly  significant  is  just  in  connection 
with  the  potential  behavior  of  the  thing  —  what  it  can  do  in 
other  contexts.  If  all  the  reactions  of  the  thing  were  exhausted 
in  the  one  dynamic  situation,  if  the  qualities  cohered  in  one 
simultaneous  inseparable  blend,  we  should  not  have  occasion 
to  deal  with  them.  We  should  always  deal  with  such  a  world 
as  consisting  of  concrete  units. 

The  theory  that  consciousness  is  perspicuous,  and  does  not 
alter  the  qualities  intuited,  is  true  enough,  if  you  mean  by 
consciousness  the  bare  character  of  awareness.  But  this  does 
not  mean  that  qualities  are  static  entities,  to  be  intuited  in 
the  abstract,  as  the  old  dogmatic  realism,  which  has  had  a 
recent  revival,  supposes.  To  regard  qualities  as  abstract  in- 
tuitions is  equivalent  to  holding  that  energies  can  be  intuited 
as  at  work,  when  they  are  not  at  work.  While  we  can  abstract 
our  awareness  from  the  energetic  continuities,  sensory  or  extra- 
organic,  that  does  not  save  us  the  trouble  of  taking  account  of 
these  specific  continuities  and  giving  a  definite  description  of 
them.  This  is  precisely  the  task  of  science.  While  all  quali- 
ties are  not  dependent  for  their  existence  upon  our  sense  con- 
tinuities, as  we  shall  show  later,  we  have  no  way  of  intuiting 
the  qualities  of  things,  except  by  our  awareness  of  such  sense 
continuities.  Things  by  themselves  have  no  properties.  They 
cannot  even  be  conceived  as  having  existence,  as  this  is  a 
dynamic  relation  —  the  difference  which  a  fact  makes  to  a  con- 
text, including  in  the  case  of  perception  the  context  of  our  sense 
energies.  And  qualities  without  contexts  are  a  pragmatic 
contradiction.  They  are  differences  which  make  no  difference 
—  non-entities.  All  that  realism  can  insist  upon  is  that  our 


76  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

taking  account  of  the  qualities  —  their  figuring  in  our  cognitive 
context  —  does  not  constitute  them.  And  with  this  probably 
no  one  now  disagrees. 

As  a  thing  may  exist  in  several  contexts  at  the  same  time,  we 
come  to  conceive  it  as  having  simultaneous  as  well  as  successive 
diversity  of  qualities.  Thus  a  bit  of  honey  may  exist  in  a  num- 
ber of  sensory  contexts  at  once.  We  see  it,  touch  it,  taste  it, 
smell  it  at  the  same  time.  The  honey  in  the  meantime  is 
undergoing  certain  physical  and  chemical  changes  independent 
of  the  sensory  contexts.  And  so  long  as  this  diversity  can  be 
attended  to  at  once  —  fulfills  one  interest  —  we  do  not  regard 
it  as  fatal  to  the  unity  of  the  thing. 

That  a  thing  may  have  different  qualities  in  different  con- 
texts, simultaneous  or  successive,  not  only  is  not  contradictory 
but  is  continually  verified  by  experience.1  The  difference 
may  be  in  different  sense  contexts,  when  different  senses  ac- 
quaint me  simultaneously  with  the  same  thing.  But  the  same 
thing  may  have  simultaneously  different  qualities  within  the 
same  sense  domain  for  different  observers.  Thus  it  may  appear 
circular  to  one  observer  and  elliptical  to  another.  It  is  both 
circular  and  elliptical  at  the  same  time,  but  not  in  the  same 
context,  and  hence  there  is  no  logical  contradiction.  That 
we  perhaps  select  the  circular  shape  as  our  standard  is  purely 
a  matter  of  convenience.  Quality  means  precisely  the  possible 
reaction  of  a  thing  in  such  and  such  a  context. 

Is  the  thing  its  qualities?  In  the  first  place,  if  we  strip  the 
thing  of  its  qualities,  of  its  possible  reactions,  what  is  left  is 
zero  —  position  without  content.  To  try  to  conceive  a  surd 
or  core  as  remaining  becomes  self-contradictory.  When  we 
try  to  make  clear  to  ourselves  what  we  mean  by  such  a  core, 
we  find  that  it  is  a  certain  group  of  qualities,  the  conditions 
for  the  appearance  of  which  are  more  constant  in  our  experience 
than  those  of  the  rest.  Thus  the  conditions  for  the  touch- 
motor  qualities  are  simpler  and  more  often  repeated  than 
those  for  the  visual  qualities.  The  conditions  for  such  physical 
qualities  as  gravity  and  heat  conduction  must  be  conceived  as 
still  more  universal.  Owing  to  the  law  of  habit,  the  qualities 

1  Mr.  C.  D.  Broad,  Mind,  July,  1912,  p.  458,  in  criticizing  my  position  thinks 
that  we  have  here  a  contradiction,  but  he  takes  qualities  as  abstract. 


KNOWING   THINGS  77 

whose  conditions  are  more  constant  become  the  standard  of 
reference  for  those  whose  conditions  are  more  intermittent. 
They  come  to  constitute  for  us  the  substance  of  the  thing. 
No  other  intelligible  meaning  can  be  given  to  the  conception 
of  substrate,  if  qualities  are  the  ways  a  thing  must  be  taken  in 
its  conduct.  There  can  be  nothing  in  the  thing  not  capable, 
theoretically  at  least,  of  being  shown  in  its  conduct.  That 
it  is  one  thing,  and  not  a  mere  sum  of  discrete  qualities,  is  it- 
self one  of  the  ways  in  which  we  must  take  a  thing.  It  is 
because  qualities  can  be  taken  as  interpenetrating  in  one  space, 
as  fulfilling  one  purpose,  that  we  speak  of  one  thing.  This, 
however,  does  not  preclude  us  from  being  interested,  in  other 
connections,  in  the  diversity  of  ways  in  which  a  thing  can  be 
taken.  No  mere  mystical  coalescence  on  the  part  of  our  states 
of  consciousness  would  destroy  the  diversity  of  functions  on  the 
part  of  a  thing. 

If  you  identify  a  thing  with  its  qualities,  in  the  second  place, 
you  must  be  careful  to  include  all  the  possible  ways  of  taking  a 
thing.  The  ways  in  which  things  can  be  taken  not  only  con- 
nect them  with  our  sensory  contexts,  but  also  with  other  con- 
texts, independent  of  our  perception.  Their  relation  to  these 
contexts  may,  for  some  purposes,  be  more  important  than  the 
relation  to  sense.  We  must  learn  to  take  the  thing  at  its  face 
value,  as  the  various  ways  in  which  it  proves  itself  in  its  variety 
of  contexts,  without  inventing  hidden  essences,  on  the  one 
hand,  or  making  abstract  entities  of  our  ways  of  taking  things, 
on  the  other. 

Does  human  nature  create  the  qualities  of  things?  It  is 
true  that  some  qualities,  involving  a  high  degree  of  physiological 
organization,  are  only  present  for  the  perception  of  man  and 
the  higher  animals,  as  in  the  case  of  color.  Our  perceptual 
qualities  in  general  do,  of  course,  involve  a  relation  to  the 
organism.  But  this  relation  is  not  constituted  by  the  cognitive 
meaning.  The  perceptual  qualities  are  just  as  independent  of 
the  cognitive  context  as  the  chemical.  It  is  true,  further, 
that  we  have  perceptual  illusions.  But  this  is  due  to  no  "fak- 
ing" of  qualities,  but  to  the  fact  that  qualities  can  only  be 
known  through  the  machinery  of  complication  and  association. 
As  some  qualities  may  be  common  to  different  contexts,  it  is 


78  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

possible  that  the  sensed  qualities  may  suggest  the  wrong  system 
of  associates  at  any  one  time,  either  as  the  result  of  habit  or 
from  the  momentary  set  of  attention.  Further  experience 
shows  in  such  a  case  that  the  supplementary  qualities  thus 
suggested  do  not  coexist  with  the  sensed  qualities  in  the  par- 
ticular thing.  But  this  is  a  problem  in  our  knowing  of  the 
qualities  and  does  not  concern  their  reality  or  objective  co- 
existence. 

A  good  deal  has  been  made  of  late  of  so-called  physical 
illusions,  such  as  the  apparent  bend  of  the  stick  when  seen 
in  water.  What  has  been  neglected  here  is  that  in  such  cases 
we  have  to  do  with  a  complex,  and  not  with  a  simple,  physical 
reaction.  The  apparent  bend  of  the  stick  in  the  water  is  due 
not  to  the  direct  action  of  light  upon  the  stick  but  to  the  phys- 
ical properties  of  water.  These  properties,  therefore,  must  be 
allowed  for,  as  they  actually  are  both  in  physics  and  in  prac- 
tical experience.  Even  the  savage,  in  spearing  fish  in  the 
water,  learned  to  allow  for  the  refraction  of  the  medium  or 
he  would  not  have  secured  any  fish.  We  select  the  apparent 
shape  of  the  stick  in  the  medium  of  the  air  as  standard,  first, 
because,  even  before  we  had  discovered  any  such  medium  as 
air,  the  visual  properties  and  the  tactual  properties  under  such 
conditions  are  found  to  lead  to  the  same  practical  results; 
and,  secondly,  because,  after  discovering  air,  we  find  that  its 
action  can  here  be  ignored  for  practical  purposes.  There  is 
no  more  illusion  here  than  in  the  case  of  the  varieties  of  visual 
shapes  and  sizes  at  various  angles  of  seeing.  These  are  real 
physical  qualities.  It  is  convenient,  however,  in  such  cases  to 
standardize  our  visual  qualities  in  terms  of  our  tactual,  and 
so  we  ignore  the  other  "  appearances "  for  ordinary  purposes. 
But  such  standardization  is  not  a  question  of  reality,  but  of 
social  convenience.  If  our  purpose  is  to  draw  an  object  in 
a  certain  perspective,  it  is  precisely  the  apparent  properties 
which  become  essential. 

As  regards  our  perceptions  of  distant  objects  in  space,  such 
as  the  stars  which  appear  to  our  senses,  here,  too,  the  difficulty 
disappears  when,  in  the  manner  of  science,  we  take  account  of 
the  whole  situation.  The  problem  in  this  case  is  complicated 
by  the  time  aspect  of  the  situation.  We  have  no  guarantee, 


KNOWING  THINGS  79 

it  is  true,  that  the  star  which  we  perceive  continues  to  exist, 
in  its  own  spatial  context,  as  we  perceive  it.  But  if  we  qualify 
the  perception  by  its  space  and  time  conditions,  we  have  a 
right  to  say  that  the  object  is  such  as  the  telescope  and  spectro- 
scope reveal  it  to  us. 

Again,  if  our  senses  were  different  —  if  they  were  grosser 
than  they  are  now  or  if  they  were  microscopic  —  the  structure 
of  things  would  no  doubt  appear  otherwise  than  it  does.  Blood 
seen  through  a  powerful  microscope  is  not  the  red  juice  our 
bare  senses  reveal  to  us.  It  consists  only  in  small  part  of 
colored  corpuscles.  But  we  must  remember  that  we  are  here 
dealing  with  a  different  context  of  reactions.  It  is  still  true 
that  blood  is  the  kind  of  thing  which  we  can  take  as  reddish  in 
our  ordinary  sense  context.  The  grosser  reaction  of  the  thing 
is  as  true  as  the  minuter.  In  each  case  the  properties  are 
indisputable  so  long  as  we  specify  the  context.  The  mass 
reactions  are  as  true  as  the  atomic  reactions  revealed  to  the 
delicate  instruments  of  Rutherford.  In  any  case,  we  must 
take  the  thing  as  we  find  it  in  the  specific  context  of  our  ex- 
perience. 

That  we  do  not  know  all  the  properties  of  things,  owing  to 
the  limitation  of  our  finite  instruments  —  our  senses  and  our 
artificial  instruments  —  and  owing  to  the  indefinite  number  of 
possible  situations,  must  be  admitted.  This  means  relative 
agnosticism;  and  to  this,  all  honest  science  must  subscribe. 
Yet  we  may  still  maintain  that  our  knowledge  is  of  the  real, 
so  far  as  it  goes;  that  it  approximates  reality  in  our  system- 
atic effort  for  truth,  and  does  not  lie  in  another  dimension  from 
the  object  which  we  attempt  to  know.  The  unknown  is  con- 
tinuous with  and  interpenetrates  the  known;  and  however 
far  we  may  be  from  knowing  all  the  properties  of  things  in 
their  possible  contexts,  yet  the  thing  can  be  taken  as  having 
the  properties  we  do  know.  Human  nature  as  cognitive  does 
not  create  qualities,  though  it  is  an  indispensable  condition 
for  their  significance. 

That  observed  qualities  and  relations  are  not  invalidated  by 
our  ignorance  of  the  rest  of  the  qualities  is  beautifully  illustrated 
in  the  history  of  the  physical  sciences.  There  has  been,  espe- 
cially since  the  discovery  of  radioactive  elements,  a  pretty 


80  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

complete  overhauling  of  our  conceptual  models  of  physics  and 
chemistry;  yet  not  one  empirical  formula  based  upon  accu- 
rately observed  properties  has  had  to  be  revised.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  observational  and  experimental  work  in  the  biological 
sciences  where  new  discoveries  have  proved  no  less  revolution- 
ary. The  immense  amount  of  classificatory  work  done  in 
those  sciences  before  Darwin  remained  undisturbed  by  the 
Darwinian  theory.  The  discovery  of  new  properties  and  laws 
has  not  vitiated  our  past  facts.  It  has  only  vitiated  some  of 
our  speculative  assumptions. 

Absolute  agnosticism,  on  the  other  hand,  has  always  main- 
tained that,  even  though  our  research  were  complete  as  regards 
the  seeming  nature  of  things,  yet  we  would  be  as  far  from 
knowing  the  real  things  as  ever.  It  insists  that  the  thing  is 
something  different  from  its  apparent  qualities,  were  they  all 
known.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  the  mental  attitude 
implied  in  this  position.  If  it  means  conceiving  a  thing  apart 
from  its  properties,  then  what  is  left  is  zero,  and  there  is  nothing 
mysterious  or  unknowable  about  zero.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
means  that  the  thing-in-itself  does  have  properties,  but  that 
these  are  different  from  those  which  we  perceive ;  that  human 
nature  has  created  the  qualities  as  we  have  them,  and  that  the 
true  qualities  could  only  be  perceived  by  a  consciousness 
entirely  different  from  our  own,  which  seems  to  be  Kant's 
position  —  if  such  is  the  assumption,  all  we  can  say  is  that  it  is 
entirely  gratuitous  and  has  no  pragmatic  value.  In  any  case, 
the  only  fruitful  method  of  procedure  is  to  assume  that  qualities 
are  such  as  we  must  take  them  in  relation  to  our  systematic 
conduct.  The  agnosticism  of  the  unconditioned,  in  the  sense 
of  a  reality  outside  the  matrix  of  concrete  relations,  is  a  fiction 
of  the  faculty  of  abstraction.  We  must  hold,  on  the  contrary, 
that  reality  is  known  in  its  concrete  determinations.  And  we 
are  ever  striving  to  increase  our  knowledge  of  things  by  trying 
them  out  in  new  determinate  situations.  It  is  by  such  experi- 
ment and  observation  that  we  find  the  melting  point  and  freezing 
point,  the  resistance,  the  complexity,  the  decomposability,  and 
the  coherence  of  the  world  as  we  have  it. 

Whether  the  persistence  of  certain  ultimate  units,  such  as 
atoms  or  electrons,  turns  out  to  be  more  than  fiction  or  not,  the 


KNOWING   THINGS  81 

reality  and  persistence  of  qualities  is  a  sine  qua  non  of  science. 
Not  only  can  we  predict  that  a  certain  set  of  qualities  shall 
make  its  appearance,  with  the  Aladdin  change  of  conditions, 
but  what  to  me  is  still  more  striking,  we  can  predict  that  cer- 
tain identical  qualities  shall  persist,  as  a  set,  through  the  protean 
transmutation  of  things,  with  their  characteristic  energies. 

Such  is  the  case  in  chemistry  with  salts  in  the  wider  sense, 
including  acids  and  bases.  To  quote  from  Ostwald :  "Salts 
are,  therefore,  characterized  by  the  fact  that  in  solution  their 
components  give  individual  reactions  which  are  in  each  case 
independent  of  the  other  component  present  in  the  salt.  And 
this  relation  is  a  reciprocal  one;  the  second  component  also 
shows  its  own  reactions  independent  of  the  first.  These 
components  of  the  salts  which  react  independently  of  one  an- 
other are  called  ions." l  This  persistence  of  qualities  as 
seemingly  individual  energies  is  shown  even  more  strongly  in 
the  case  of  biological  heredity.  The  chromosome  characters 
of  the  germ  cell,  which  are  now  believed  to  constitute  an  im- 
portant part  of  the  factors  in  the  transmission  of  characteristics 
including  sex,  constitute  a  qualitative  constellation  which  is 
constant  in  the  particular  life  form,  whether  as  regards  sex  or 
species.  Mendel's  law  formulates  in  general  how  the  "  unit 
characters  "  appear  in  the  reproduction  of  individuals.  "  The 
essential  feature  of  Mendel's  law  is  briefly  this:  hereditary 
characters  are  usually  independent  units  which  segregate  out 
upon  crossing,  regardless  of  temporary  dominance." 2  Mendel, 
in  his  experiments  on  garden  peas,  found  that  in  crossing  tall 
peas  and  dwarf  peas,  the  offspring  would  all  tend  to  be  tall. 
This  held  true  irrespective  of  the  sex  of  the  tall  parent,  show- 
ing that  the  character  of  tallness  was  independent  of  sex. 
Mendel  called  the  character  which  appeared  in  the  first  gener- 
ation, the  dominant,  and  the  one  that  was  latent,  the  reces- 
sive. In  crossing  the  offspring,  the  progeny  would  consist  of 
tails  and  dwarfs  in  the  proportion  of  three  to  one;  but  of 
these  tails  only  one  proved  to  be  pure.  The  other  two, 
when  crossed,  would  reproduce  the  proportions  obtained  in 

1  Ostwald,  "Principles  of  Inorganic  Chemistry"  (1902), English  translation, 
p.  189. 

2  "Genetics,"  H.  E.  Walter,  New  York,  1914. 


82  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

interbreeding  the  results  of  the  first  cross.  If  interbreeding 
between  the  different  strains  is  prevented,  the  tendency  will 
be  for  the  original  characters  to  assert  themselves,  and  the 
number  of  individuals  with  a  blend  of  characters  in  their 
germ  plasm,  such  as  obtains  I  in  the  impure  tall  strain,  will 
become  reduced  in  proportion  to  the  numbers  of  those  bearing 
the  original  characters  in  pure  form.  In  the  case  of  crosses  be- 
tween certain  species,  the  intactness  of  the  original  characters 
is  provided  for  by  the  sterility  of  the  hybrid  carrying  the  blend 
of  those  characters,  as  in  the  case  of  the  mule.  Thus  the  origi- 
nal characters  tend  to  reappear  intact,  and  the  race  in  the 
long  run  would  tend  to  run  pure.  The  problem,  it  is  true,  is 
more  complex  than  Mendel  foresaw.  Thus  the  relation  of 
dominant  and  recessive  is  not  an  invariable  one.  In  some 
cases  both  strains  assert  themselves  equally  in  the  first  gener- 
ation. Moreover,  it  is  not  always  possible  to  segregate  single 
characters,  as  Mendel  supposed.  Sometimes  two  characters  are 
linked  and  act  as  one.  But  for  all  that,  the  Mendelian  conception 
of  unit  characters  is  highly  convenient  in  dealing  with  heredity. 

The  characters  or  qualities  thus  constitute  the  pragmatic 
significance  of  the  thing.  And  if  science  can  abstract  the  char- 
acters or  qualities  so  as  to  predict  the  behavior  of  nature  in  its 
stages  of  change  and  complexity,  things  are  of  secondary  impor- 
tance. Or  rather,  the  identity  of  characters  is  for  science  the 
substance.  Even  the  chemical  elements  have  fallen  into  a 
"natural  series  "  on  the  basis  of  identical  characters.  Whether 
these  elements  prove  ultimate  or  not,  the  qualities  and  the 
predictions  based  upon  them  remain  as  of  prime  importance 
in  conceptual  description.  We  must  start  with  qualities  and 
hold  the  individuals,  as  far  as  we  can,  in  the  net  of  our  identities. 
Concrete  individuals,  on  the  other  hand,  seem  to  come  and  go. 
They  probably  never  quite  repeat  themselves.  What  is 
predictable  are  the  recurrent  qualities  —  the  karma  as  the 
Buddhists  called  it,  in  the  case  of  moral  qualities. 

While  this  abstract  view  of  qualities,  however,  is  convenient 
in  our  ignorance  in  unlocking  the  secrets  of  nature,  we  cannot  re- 
gard it  as  metaphysically  final.  In  reality  there  are  not  "unit 
characters,"  as  Mendel  calls  recurrent  qualities,  but  dynamic 
situations  hanging  together  by  means  of  certain  overlapping 


KNOWING   THINGS  83 

identities.  Thus  it  has  been  shown  by  Professor  E.  B.  Wilson 
that  chromosome  characters  are  not  sufficient  by  themselves 
to  determine  heredity,  but  we  must  take  account  as  well  of  the 
potentials  of  the  protoplasmic  context  in  which  they  exist, 
though  of  course  this  would  not  prevent  our  having  predict- 
ability by  taking  account  of  the  chromosome  characters  alone,  the 
protoplasmic  conditions  remaining  practically  the  same.  The 
whole  concreteness  of  the  situation  is  not  necessary  for  predic- 
tion. If  it  were,  we  could  not  have  science.  For  ethical  and 
aesthetic  purposes,  again,  the  individuals,  whether  transient 
or  permanent,  may  have  final  and  eternal  significance. 

Finally,  the  fundamental  law  of  the  thing,  as  of  the  self,  is 
interpenetration.  This  is  the  only  a  priori  law  of  substance. 
Unless  the  mind  were  so  constituted  as  to  locate  in  each  other's 
space  those  qualities  which  fulfill  one  interest,  figure  in  one 
attention  act,  there  could  be  no  such  process  as  learning  by 
experience.  Suppose  that  Bergson  were  right  that  the  funda- 
mental law  of  the  material  world  is  juxtaposition,  side-by- 
sideness  of  images,  the  spatial  spreading  out  of  impressions 
like  the  record  of  the  cinematograph  or  of  the  plate  of  the 
gyroscope.  In  such  a  world  we  should  have  hopeless  chaos. 
Such  unities  as  things  could  never  arise  in  perception  and 
consequently  there  could  be  no  practical  adjustment  to  our 
world.  The  intellect  would  be  a  useless  instrument  at  best, 
an  anomaly  in  such  a  world.  What  is  exclusive  is  the  old 
mechanical  model  of  atoms  which  is  fast  breaking  down. 
What  is  absolutely  fixed  are  our  mathematical  symbols.  Fixity 
in  the  world-as-experienced  is  a  relative  and  approximate 
affair,  not  something  we  can  take  for  granted.  What  has  been 
emphasized  by  the  electrical  conception  is  precisely  this  inter- 
penetration  of  energies  in  the  so-called  atom,  the  durcheinander, 
and  not  the  juxtaposition  of  qualities.  The  atoms  must  be 
conceived,  not  as  impenetrable  entities,  but  as  more  or  less 
stable  dynamic  clusters  within  dynamic  systems.  Even  the 
negative  electric  charge,  if  it  should  turn  out  to  be  a  final 
entity,  exists  primarily  in  interpenetration  with  other  elements. 
At  any  rate  this  conception,  whether  its  symbolism  is  final  or 
not,  has  taught  us  that  energetic  interpenetration  and  over- 
lapping characterize  the  ultimate  constitution  of  our  world. 


84  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

If  we  speak  of  interpenetration  as  an  a  priori  law  of  our 
perception,  we  do  not  mean  it  is  an  arbitrary  law.  Mind, 
in  its  long  survival  history,  has  been  shaped  on  things.  This 
is  what  makes  it  practical.  The  law  of  interpenetration  is 
convenient  just  because  it  enables  us  to  meet  the  actual  world 
as  ascertained  by  experiment  and  as  fulfilling  the  requirements 
for  action. 

II 

Having  now  defined  in  general  the  nature  of  qualities,  I  wish 
to  say  a  word  about  the  problem  of  their  relative  importance. 
The  distinction  between  primary  and  secondary  qualities  is  an 
ancient  one.  There  have  been  several  reasons  for  making  some 
qualities  more  important  than  others.  One  reason  offered 
in  the  past  is  the  mode  of  intuition.  The  primary  qualities 
are  suppposed  to  be  immediately  intuited,  according  to  such 
writers  as  Thomas  Reid,  while  the  secondary  qualities  are 
supposed  to  be  due  to  our  sense  reactions.  To  use  Reid's  own 
language,  "Our  senses  give  us  a  direct  and  distinct  notion  of 
the  primary  qualities,  and  inform  us  what  they  are  in  them- 
selves :  but  of  the  secondary  qualities,  our  senses  give  us  only 
a  relative  and  obscure  notion.  They  inform  us  only  that  they 
are  qualities  which  affect  us  in  a  certain  manner."  1  According 
to  this  theory  the  primary  qualities  would  be  not  only  copies 
but  identical  with  reality,  while  secondary  qualities  are  only 
ways  in  which  the  primary  qualities  affect  our  sensibilities. 
Thomas  Brown,  however,  already  recognized  that  there  is  no 
essential  difference  between  qualities  so  far  as  the  mode  of 
perception  goes.  "I  cannot  discover  anything  in  the  sensations 
themselves,  corresponding  with  the  primary  and  secondary 
qualities,  which  is  direct,  as  Dr.  Reid  says,  in  one  case  and  rela- 
tive in  the  other.  All  are  relative  in  his  sense."  2  They  are  all 
alike  in  being  reactions  of  our  organism  upon  the  selected  stimuli. 
Nor  is  there  anything  inherently  depraved  about  sense  that 
would  make  qualities  subjective  or  unreal,  just  because  they 
are  sensed. 

Again,  qualities  that  are  perceived  by  means  of  a  number 

1  "  On  the  Intellectual  Powers,"  Essay  II,  §  17. 

»  "Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind,"  1828,  pp.  253  f. 


KNOWING   THINGS  85 

of  senses  have  been  thought  to  have  a  superior  reality  to  those 
perceived  only  through  one  sense.  Thus  form,  size,  position, 
and  motion  are  perceived  by  sight  and  touch  alike.  But  solid- 
ity, which  has  figured  as  one  of  the  most  important  of  the 
primary  qualities,  can  only  be  had  by  means  of  the  sense  of 
active  touch.  So  perception  by  a  number  of  senses  cannot 
be  all-important. 

It  has  been  argued  again  that  the  more  generic  sense  qualities 
are  more  real  than  the  more  specific  ones.  Because  the  generic 
sense  qualities  lend  themselves  best  to  mathematical  descrip- 
tion, it  has  been  supposed  that  they  come  nearest  to  giving  us 
the  reality  of  nature.  Secondary  qualities  on  the  whole  are 
due  to  greater  specialization  of  our  sense  organs  and  have 
seemed  to  be  more  subjective.  But  it  is  a  fact  that  some  of  the 
generic  qualities  do  not  seem  to  figure  high  in  the  scale  of  in- 
formation. Thus  pain  and  temperature  are  among  the  most 
generic  of  our  sense  qualities,  but  they  have  not  been  recognized 
as  belonging  to  the  primary  list.  Because  the  conditions  for 
the  manifestation  of  the  qualities  are  complex,  it  does  not 
follow  that  the  qualities  are  less  real.  The  conditions  for  the 
making  available  of  electrical  properties  are  exceedingly  com- 
plex, but  we  do  not  on  that  account  doubt  the  reality  of  elec- 
tricity. 

Again,  qualities  have  been  deemed  subjective  or  objective 
according  to  their  clearness  or  distinctness  to  the  attention. 
The  primary  qualities,  according  to  Descartes,  are  clear  and 
distinct,  while  the  secondary  qualities  are  held  to  be  confused. 
But  according  to  this,  color  and  tone  would  rank  at  the  head 
of  the  list,  because  there  we  can  distinguish  more  qualities 
and  arrange  them  in  a  serial  order  with  greater  success  than  we 
can  in  the  other  senses.  This  is  especially  true  of  color,  where 
the  largest  range  of  qualitative  discrimination  and  arrangement 
is  possible ;  but  neither  color  nor  tone  was  included  in  the  old 
list  of  primary  qualities,  though  they  permit  of  the  greatest 
analysis. 

More  convincing  is  the  argument  based  on  their  value  for 
prediction.  The  primary  qualities,  according  to  Locke,  are 
constant  and  inseparable  while  the  secondary  qualities  vary. 
While  this  is  true,  to  a  certain  extent,  shape,  extension,  and 


86  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

weight  cannot  be  regarded  as  invariably  present  in  the  physical 
objects  with  which  we  must  deal.  We  cannot  speak  of  electric- 
ity, for  example,  as  having  either  shape,  extension,  or  weight. 
These  qualities,  therefore,  cannot  be  regarded  as  universal,  as 
Locke  would  have  us  think.  On  the  other  hand,  the  qualities 
just  mentioned  are  only  constant  when  conditions  are  the  same. 
In  this  respect,  therefore,  they  have  no  particular  advantage 
over  the  so-called  secondary  qualities.  Mass  varies  with 
temperature  and  with  pressure,  and  it  has  been  shown  recently 
to  vary  with  velocity.  Velocity  approaching  that  of  light  has 
been  found  to  increase  the  apparent  mass.  But  that  qualities 
differ  under  different  conditions  certainly  does  not  indicate 
any  subjectivity.  If  so,  we  would  have  to  conclude  with 
Berkeley  that  all  qualities  are  subjective.  Constancy  for 
science  always  means  repetition  under  determinate  conditions. 

One  reason  for  the  distinction  between  primary  and  secondary 
qualities  has  doubtless  been  the  confusion  between  qualities 
and  values.  The  so-called  secondary  qualities  have  been 
rejected  in  part,  no  doubt,  because  of  their  affective  tone.  This 
affective  tone  is  especially  prominent  in  connection  with  such 
qualities  as  those  of  taste  or  smell.  But  Aristotle,  long  ago, 
pointed  out  that  touch  may  be  the  most  sensuous  of  the  senses, 
and  therefore  carry  the  most  violent  organic  tone.  We  would, 
therefore,  have  to  reject  touch  as  well  as  taste.  In  fact,  we 
would  have  to  reject  most  of  our  sense  qualities. 

Evidently,  one  difficulty  in  making  up  the  classical  primary 
list,  which  for  the  most  part  remains  approved,  was  the  lack  of 
scientific  knowledge.  Thus  the  old  list  fails  to  include  weight, 
which  has  since  come  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  important 
of  the  descriptive  qualities.  The  old  theory  of  primary  quali- 
ties, moreover,  presupposes  the  impact  theory  of  physical 
changes,  and  so  emphasizes  extensive  mass  as  fundamental 
and  universal.  This  will  have  to  be  revised  in  the  light  of 
our  more  recent  knowledge  of  electricity  and  radioactivity. 
Such  energies  have  brought  to  light  a  whole  list  of  descriptive 
properties  which  were  unthought  of  in  the  old  catalogue. 
Certainly,  impact  would  be  far  too  gross  a  method  of  describing 
these  reactions. 

Whatever  basis  we  can  find  for  distinction,  as  to  the  impor- 


KNOWING   THINGS  87 

tance  of  qualities,  it  is  clear  that  any  such  basis  must  be  relative, 
not  absolute.  It  is  relative  to  the  purpose  in  question.  What  is 
primary  for  one  purpose  may  be  quite  secondary  for  another 
purpose.  Thus  the  importance  of  the  mechanical  qualities  is 
quite  secondary  for  aesthetic  purposes,  while  color  and  tone 
become  of  very  great  importance.  Qualities  must  be  considered 
as  objective,  if  they  enable  us  to  identify  and  predict  the  things 
with  which  we  must  deal.  And  in  this  the  so-called  secondary 
qualities  may  be  fully  as  important  as  the  so-called  primary. 
Locke  himself,  in  giving  us  the  description  of  gold,  does  not  fail 
to  mention  its  yellowness.  In  the  identification  of  a  gas,  the 
odor  may  be  of  the  greatest  importance.  In  identifying  a  solu- 
tion, as  a  saline  solution,  the  sense  of  taste  may  be  worth 
all  the  rest.  Qualities  are  objective  just  in  so  far  as  we  must 
take  them  as  objective.  If  they  do  not  help  us  to  identify  an 
object,  they  can  no  longer  be  called  qualities.  They  must  be 
reckoned  on  the  side  of  value. 

Some  qualities  can  be  taken  as  existing  independently  of  the 
reaction  of  the  human  organism,  though  of  course  they  must 
make  a  difference  to  the  context  of  perception,  too,  in  order  to 
be  known.  This,  however,  is  secondary  in  importance  to  their 
reactions  in  other  contexts.  Thus,  we  have  more  confidence  in 
weight  as  determined  by  the  mechanical  scales  than  when  indi- 
cated by  our  sensory  quality  of  strain.  For  the  purpose  of 
science  we  must  determine  our  conduct  with  reference  to  weight 
as  fixed  by  scales.  In  determining  temperature  we  place  more 
reliance  on  the  thermometer  than  on  the  sensory  differences  of 
hot  and  cold.  And  so  in  regard  to  size,  we  have  more  confidence 
in  size  as  determined  by  certain  standard  measures  which  are 
kept  under  artificial  conditions  than  we  have  when  we  depend 
on  sensory  qualities.  We  must  take  some  qualities  as  existing 
in  contexts  of  their  own,  independent  of  the  organism.  This 
fact  is  doubtless  what  has  given  rise  to  the  conception  of  primary 
qualities,  and  what  makes  Locke  speak  of  these  as  archetypes 
which  we  copy,  though  even  from  this  point  of  view  there  is 
not  complete  consistency,  as  can  be  seen  in  the  case  of  heat  and 
weight,  which  do  not  occur  in  Locke's  primary  list.  The  rela- 
tion, however,  is  not  that  of  copying.  In  fact,  cognitively, 
the  sensory  differences  would  necessarily  come  first.  The 


88  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

relation  is  rather  that  we  can  take  the  qualities  which  are  sensed 
as  identical  with  the  qualities  in  other  contexts,  for  example, 
that  of  the  scales. 

Such  qualities  as  color  or  taste,  on  the  other  hand,  must  be 
taken  as  requiring  specialized  organic  "conditions.  While  the 
light  waves  have  qualities  in  other  contexts,  such  as  revealed  by 
the  camera  film  and  various  pigments,  these  are  not  the  qualities 
of  the  sensible  context  of  color.  It  does  not  at  all  follow, 
however,  that  because  some  qualities  can  only  exist  in  the 
specialized  context  of  certain  sense  organs  that  they  are  there- 
fore subjective.  Because  we  can  only  get  water  under  the 
condition  of  H2O,  it  does  not  follow  that  water  is  subjective. 
The  context  of  our  retina,  with  its  rods  and  cones,  in  connection 
with  light  rays,  is  just  as  real  a  context  and  just  as  independent 
of  our  will  as  that  of  any  other  chemical  or  physical  reactions. 

There  is  only  one  meaning,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  in  which  we 
could  speak  of  subjective  qualities.  And  that  is,  if  we  speak 
of  having  qualities  as  itself  a  quality.  Thus  some  would  say 
that  the  sky  has  the  quality  of  having  the  quality,  blue.  In 
this  case  we  can  easily  suppose  an  infinite  series,  because  the 
quality  of  having  qualities  can  be  repeated  on  itself  any  number 
of  times  that  imagination  chooses  to  conjure.  Obviously  this 
is  a  purely  subjective  process  —  a  creation  of  intellectual 
abstraction.  It  does  not  add  anything  to  the  existence  of 
qualities. 

Any  quality  may  be  treated  as  a  sign  or  secondary  to  other 
qualities  for  the  specific  purpose  in  question.  Thus  visual 
qualities  may  be  treated  as  secondary  to  tactual  and  these  again 
to  chemical,  when  the  purpose  is  the  satisfaction  of  hunger. 
But  for  the  purpose  of  enjoying  a  painting  or  reading  a  book, 
the  tactual  qualities  become  signs  or  secondary,  for  the  normal 
person,  to  the  visual.  In  space  perception,  touch  may  serve 
to  call  up  a  sight  map  and  this  in  turn  to  suggest  motor  sensa- 
tions. 

In  any  case,  when  we  are  dealing  with  qualities  we  are  not 
concerned  with  the  relation  of  a  thing  to  consciousness,  but  with 
its  relation  to  a  determinate  energetic  context,  whether  that  be 
physiological  or  physical.  Qualities  are  certain  permanent  ex- 
pectancies which  we  can  have  with  reference  to  things  under 


KNOWING   THINGS  89 

definite  conditions.  The  purpose  in  question,  whether  mechan- 
ical or  economic  or  aesthetic,  must  decide  the  importance  of  the 
qualities  so  far  as  that  particular  context  is  concerned.  All 
qualities,  in  so  far  as  they  are  qualities,  must  be  taken  as  real. 
Their  acknowledgment  is  a  forced  acknowledgment. 

Ill 

There  has  been  a  tendency  ever  since  Berkeley  to  confuse 
sensations  and  sense  qualities,  and  on  account  of  this  confusion 
to  insist  upon  the  subjective  character  of  the  sense  qualities 
and  all  qualities.  Now,  it  is  quite  true  that,  in  order  to  become 
significant,  qualities  must  become  a  part  of  the  context  of  our 
cognitive  experience;  but  this  does  not  prove  that  qualities 
have  no  other  status  than  that  of  experience.  Berkeley,  we 
all  admit,  is  wrong  in  supposing  that,  in  knowing  the  qualities, 
the  observer,  whether  human  or  superhuman,  creates  them. 
Qualities,  we  have  seen,  have  their  own  energetic  contexts, 
whether  in  relation  to  our  organism  or  independent  of  it.  We 
must  take  account  of  the  changes  of  nature,  its  growth  and  decay, 
quite  irrespective  of  whether  we  are  conscious  of  it  or  not. 
Berkeley,  on  the  other  hand,  truly  states  the  relation  of  qualities 
to  our  cognitive  attitudes.  "To  explain  the  phenomena  is 
all  one  as  to  show  why,  upon  such  and  such  occasions,  we  are 
affected  with  such  and  such  ideas."  l  But  he  is  not  warranted 
on  that  account  in  saying  that  the  qualities  are  nothing  but 
ideas.  This  is  confusing  the  causa  cognoscendi,  or  the  reason 
for  our  knowing,  with  the  causa  essendi,  or  the  reason  for  exist- 
ence. 

Taking  a  content  as  a  quality,  moreover,  and  taking  it  as  a 
pure  sensation  are  two  entirely  different  attitudes.  Taking  it 
as  a  sensation  means  the  bare  awareness  for  a  subjective  inter- 
est, without  relation  to  an  objective  context,  while  taking  it  as  a 
quality  means  taking  it  as  a  part  of  a  specific  context,  fulfilling 
a  purpose.  Taking  yellow  as  a  sensation  or  having  a  yellow 
consciousness  is  a  different  attitude  from  yellow  as  a  quality, 
as  in  recognizing  gold  as  yellow.  Whether  there  ever  exists  in 
experience  a  pure  sensation,  we  will  not  argue  here,  but  the 
logical  distinction  is  none  the  less  clear.  The  reference  or 

1  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  §  50. 


90  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

attitude  is  quite  different  in  the  two  cases.  We  can  never 
say,  therefore,  that  our  sensations  constitute  the  thing.  Calling 
them  sensations  already  indicates  that  they  are  taken  in  the 
context  of  a  subjective  interest,  apart  from  the  context  of  things. 
What  is  objective  is  the  sensible  qualities  —  the  qualities  as 
perceived  and  as  they  must  be  taken  again  under  similar  condi- 
tions. A  sense  quality  is  not  a  pure  sensation,  but  conditions 
the  selective  interest  and  remains  independent  of  its  variations. 
Things  are  never  merely  sensed.  Qualities  are  qualifications 
of  a  certain  interest  in  the  world  as  sensed.  Thus  we  qualify 
our  interest  in  the  thing,  chair,  by  the  way  it  appears  to  the 
touch  and  the  way  it  appears  to  sight,  and  to  various  other 
senses.  We  never  make  the  mistake  of  eating  or  clothing 
ourselves  with  sensations,  but  we  deal  with  things  as  sensed. 
Part,  at  least,  of  Berkeley's  convincingness  lies  in  his  playing 
between  things  as  perceptions  and  things  as  perceived. 

Furthermore,  sensations  persist  after  the  sensible  continuities, 
which  make  us  attribute  them  to  things,  no  longer  exist.  This 
can  be  seen  in  complication  —  the  sensory  revival,  which  gives 
us  the  concrete  perceptual  object,  on  the  reestablishing  of 
sensible  continuity ;  in  illusion,  where  the  wrong  sensory  com- 
plex is  stimulated;  or  in  hallucination,  where  the  sensory 
context  is  intraorganically  reexcited.  In  all  these  cases  of 
the  revival  of  sensory  elements,  we  must  distinguish  between 
their  existence  as  subjective  states  and  their  being  taken  as 
qualities  of  things.  Sensations  can  be  taken  as  qualities  only 
in  so  far  as  they  are  actually  or  signify  sensible  continuities. 
As  such  sensible  continuities  they  can  be  taken  twice,  i.e.  as 
figuring  as  part  of  the  sensed  object  and  as  figuring  in  the  con- 
text of  our  interest.  But  it  is  the  identical  quality  which 
figures  in  the  two  contexts.  To  the  sensations,  as  persisting 
as  sensory  elements  after  the  stimulus,  we  may  apply  Professor 
Stout's  term  of  "  psychic  existents."  But  this  merely  signifies 
that  they  have  a  locus  within  the  context  of  interest.  They 
still  remain  physical  facts.  And,  in  perceptual  assimilation,  they 
still  figure  as  qualities  of  the  thing.  The  ice  looks  cold  and  hard. 

Some  sensations  are  not  normally  taken  as  sense  qualities. 
Some  sensations,  for  example,  inform  us,  not  of  qualities 
primarily,  but  of  relations.  Thus,  the  joint  sensations,  the 


KNOWING  THINGS  91 

sensations  of  the  semicircular  canals,  the  sensations  of  con- 
traction and  expansion  of  muscles  and  tendons,  though  they 
contribute  a  great  deal  to  our  consciousness  of  space  relations, 
do  not  ordinarily  inform  us  about  any  new  qualities  of  the 
things  involved.  Other  sensations,  again,  like  the  organic 
sensations  in  the  more  specific  sense,  such  as  hunger,  thirst, 
sex,  nausea  are  so  vague  and  so  fused  with  the  feelings  that  they 
do  not  inform  us  about  the  objects,  but  about  the  way  in  which 
the  objects  affect  the  welfare  of  our  organism.  They,  there- 
fore, come  to  enter  as  a  part  of  our  sense  of  value,  instead  of 
being  taken  as  qualities  of  the  thing.  It  seems,  however, 
that  the  organic  sensations  do  contribute  a  certain  coefficient 
of  existence,  in  the  sense  of  presence,  which  may  be  regarded  as 
qualifying  the  object.  In  such  sensations  as  those  of  taste  or 
smell,  the  accompanying  affective  tone  seems  the  more  impor- 
tant part  of  the  situation. 

Again,  it  is  indifferent  to  some  qualities  that  they  may  be 
sensed.  Of  these,  the  sense  qualities  may  be  regarded  as  signs. 
The  reality  of  such  qualities  we  take  to  be  their  existence  in  the 
extra-organic  context.  Our  consciousness  or  perception  of  the 
explosion  does  not  make  the  explosion  occur,  though  it  indicates 
the  connection  of  the  explosion  with  our  sensible  experience 
and*  so  makes  it  significant  to  us.  The  knife  in  the  drawer 
grows  rusty  and  loses  its  sharpness,  though  we  have  not  per- 
ceived it  in  the  meantime.  The  chemical  changes  in  such  cases 
must  be  interpolated  by  ourselves,  when  we  establish  sensible 
continuity  with  the  thing.  Our  physical  instruments  are  often 
far  more  sensitive  to  certain  changes  than  our  gross  senses. 
Where  the  senses,  even  when  equipped  with  telescopes,  fail 
to  see  stars,  the  more  sensitive  film  of  the  camera  still  records 
them  and  makes  it  possible  for  us  to  count  them.  A  large 
part  of  the  qualities  of  nature  we  must  take  account  of  in  this 
a  posteriori  fashion.  Our  taking  account  of  the  coexistence  of 
qualities  does  not  make  either  the  coexistence  or  the  qualities. 
The  intellect,  while  a  coupling  agency,  fulfills  its  function,  not 
when  it  couples  arbitrarily,  as  Kant  would  have  us  believe, 
for  then  we  have  illusions,  but  when  it  couples  in  such  a  way 
that  our  conjunctions  tally  with  the  conjunctions  of  qualities 
as  ascertained  through  experience. 


CHAPTER  VI 

KNOWING  THINGS  (Continued) 
Things  and  Relations 

THE  problem  of  relations  is  one  of  the  most  controversial 
in  the  history  of  thought.  It  will  be  impossible  here  to  enter 
into  these  controversies  in  detail.  We  shall  touch  on  them 
only  in  so  far  as  they  throw  light  upon  the  exposition  of  the 
problem  itself.  And  in  this  exposition  we  must  limit  ourselves 
to  a  few  fundamental  considerations.  At  the  very  outset  we 
are  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  status  of  relations  is  a  matter  of 
considerable  confusion.  Those  who  start  with  the  conception 
of  a  heterogeneous  manifold,  whether  sensations  or  physical 
elements,  naturally  look  upon  relations  as  accidental.  It  has 
been  held  by  some,  notably  Kant  and  Herbart,  that  relations 
are  subjective  additions  to  our  world.  We  are  supposed  to 
start  with  simple  sensations  or  simple  qualities ;  and  the  mind 
is  supposed  to  synthesize  these  by  means  of  certain  categories 
of  its  own  such  as  space,  time,  and  causality.  Now  it  is  true 
that,  in  our  weaving  the  facts  of  experience  into  our  appercep- 
tive  systems,  certain  subjective  elements  enter  in.  Our  space 
orientations  are  made,  first  of  all,  with  reference  to  our  organ- 
ism, as  the  center  of  its  world.  Nearer  and  farther,  right  and 
left,  up  and  down,  have  their  basis  in  the  kinsesthetic  sensations 
of  the  organism  and  its  adjustments  to  meet  its  individual  needs. 
Our  consciousness  of  the  immediate  duration  of  intervals  de- 
pends, for  shorter  intervals,  upon  certain  sensations  of  atten- 
tion strain,  and,  for  longer  intervals,  upon  certain  rhythmic 
organic  functions  such  as  digestion.  Our  indirect  dating  of 
events  as  before  or  after  is  likewise  due  in  the  first  instance  to 
our  subjective  interest  which  arranges  events  in  a  personal 
series.  Our  number  consciousness,  in  like  manner,  has  its 

92 


KNOWING  THINGS  93 

start  in  certain  subjective  processes  of  counting  and  thus 
bringing  objects,  which  are  perhaps  innocent  of  any  number 
order,  into  an  order  of  our  own,  as  first,  second,  third,  etc. 
Causality  means,  in  the  first  instance,  a  certain  consciousness 
of  control  over  our  bodily  movements  and  the  manipulation 
of  external  things  through  them ;  and  we  naively  read  into  the 
world  outside  of  our  organism  a  similar  type  of  agency.  Our 
quantitative  and  qualitative  series  have  their  root  in  certain 
practical  interests.  These  condition  the  measure  of  our  quanti- 
ties and  the  basis  of  selection  for  our  qualitative  order.  But 
while  it  is  true  that  our  consciousness  of  relations  has  its  start 
in  our  subjective  interests,  it  is  not  true  that  these  constitute 
arbitrarily  the  relations  thus  taken  account  of.  In  our  social 
interactions,  we  learn  to  abstract  from  what  is  peculiar  to  our 
personal  interests  and  to  recognize  relations  that  are  valid  for 
all  of  us.  We  construct  a  common  world  of  spatial  distances, 
temporal  sequences,  causal  expectancies,  numerical  diversity, 
quantitative  and  qualitative  identities  and  differences.  The 
units  of  measurement  and  the  starting  point  of  our  ordering 
are  conventional  enough.  But,  in  any  case,  our  mental  proc- 
esses relate  to  concrete  complexes  in  which  the  relations  are  as 
real  as  the  qualities  or  ensembles  of  qualities  which  we  abstract 
as  terms. 

Instead  of  starting  from  the  learning  process,  and  regard- 
ing relations  as  subjective  because,  in  order  to  be  known,  they 
must  come  to  figure  in  the  contexts  of  our  interests,  Bradley  l 
and  others  have  started  from  logical  considerations  to  impugn 
the  reality  of  relations.  Here,  too,  the  difficulty  will  be  found 
in  certain  initial  assumptions.  If  we  start  with  abstract  unre- 
lated terms,  we  may  find  it  difficult  to  furnish  any  cement 
which  will  hold  the  terms  together.  By  a  trick  of  language, 
Bradley,  at  the  outset,  substantiates  the  relations  into  things. 
He  then  argues  that  in  order  for  the  relations  to  unite  the  terms, 
they  must  either  have  something  in  common  with  the  terms  to 
be  related,  or  be  wholly  diverse  from  them.  In  the  former  case, 
what  they  have  in  common  would  have  to  fall  apart  from  what 
is  diverse.  Otherwise  we  would  have  mere  identity.  We  are 
therefore  left  with  the  second  horn  of  the  dilemma ;  and  however 

1  "Appearance  and  Reality,"  Ch.  III. 


94  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

we  proceed  in  our  attempted  synthesis,  reality  must  always 
disintegrate  into  mere  diversity.  To  take  a  concrete  example : 
if  you  say  that  the  book  is  on  the  table,  then  the  relation  on 
would  itself  have  to  be  taken  as  an  abstract  entity,  and  it 
would  be  necessary,  in  turn,  to  relate  this  to  the  table  and  the 
book  and  to  repeat  this  process  indefinitely.  It  would  follow 
that  the  book  could  not  possibly  be  conceived  as  being  on  the 
table.1 

To  obviate  this  embarrassing  dilemma,  Royce  proposes  to 
accept  the  problem  as  stated  by  Bradley  at  its  face  value,  but 
to  seek  the  solution  in  the  concept  of  an  infinite  series.  We 
have  no  quarrel  with  infinite  series.  They  are  creatures  of 
definition  and  no  doubt  exist  in  the  world  of  conceptual  con- 
struction. The  concept  of  infinite  series  signifies  merely 
that  we  can  conceive  collections  where  a  part  can  be  put  into 
a  one-to-one  correspondence  with  the  whole.  That  holds 
true  in  the  logical  concept  of  number.  Our  contention  here  is 
merely  that  the  hypothesis  is  irrelevant.  Bradley's  dilemma 
would  not  be  affected  any  more  by  an  infinite  than  a  finite 
regress.  It  contains  no  law  or  order  which  points  to  a  limit. 
It  can  only  be  resolved  by  an  examination  of  the  initial  assump- 
tion which  seems  to  be  false.  We  are  not  given  abstract  terms 
or  abstract  relations  as  the  units  of  experience.  Terms  and 
relations  are  pragmatic.  They  are  our  emphases  in  the  service 
of  the  dominant  interest  for  the  time  being.  The  real  units 
of  reality  are  neither  terms  nor  relations,  but  energy  systems 
from  which  the  terms  and  relations  are  intellectual  abstractions. 

The  relations,  moreover,  as  we  know  them  in  our  real  world, 
are  finite  relations.  The  series  of  grays  which  we  can  discrimi- 
nate, in  the  case  of  our  light  sensations,  are  a  definite  number, 
dependent  upon  certain  psychophysical  conditions.  The 
camera  may  distinguish  still  other  shades  which  lie  outside 
the  sensitiveness  of  our  retina;  but  it,  too,  distinguishes  a 
definite  number,  conditioned  by  its  peculiar  structure.  Even 
in  the  case  of  infinite  series,  the  relations  upon  which  the  law 
of  the  series  is  based  are  finite.2  Bradley  is  quite  right  that 
relations  are  meaningless  when  taken  as  pure  abstractions. 

1  See  James'  criticism  of  Bradley,  "Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,"  Ch.  III. 

2  See  "Truth  and  Reality,"  pp.  141-145. , 


KNOWING   THINGS  95 

What  could  on  or  in  or  of  or  between  or  distant  or  before  and 
after  mean  if  they  were  taken  as  things  in  themselves?  They 
do,  nevertheless,  have  real  meaning  if  taken  within  their  proper 
systems.  The  book  being  on  the  table  means  something  dif- 
ferent from  its  being  under  the  table.  If  we  would  understand 
further  how  the  book  can  be  on  the  table,  we  must  take  account, 
not  merely  of  the  space  system  of  relations,  but  of  the  physical 
system  with  the  properties  implied.  If  table  and  book  were 
liquids  instead  of  solids,  it  might  be  impossible  for  the  book 
to  stay  on  the  table.  Alcohol  will  not  stay  on  water;  the 
two  mix,  which,  however,  is  not  the  case  with  oil  and  alcohol. 
To  ascertain,  therefore,  whether  certain  relations  are  contra- 
dictory to  reality,  we  must  investigate  empirically  the  nature  of 
the  particular  complex.  The  intellect  finds  nothing  contradic- 
tory about  this  procedure  unless  it  has  been  debauched  by  a 
false  metaphysics.  Nor  is  it  clear  why  aesthetics  should  possess 
a  superior  type  of  solvency  to  that  of  science.  ^Esthetic  sys- 
tems do,  indeed,  furnish  a  certain  type  of  unity  which  can  be 
taken  at  its  face  value  wherever  realized,  but  this  is  no  sub- 
stitute for  an  intelligent  understanding  of  our  world.  And 
aesthetic  unities,  too,  are  capable  of  being  translated  into  logi- 
cal terms  without  dirempting  their  aesthetic  reality.  For  our 
practical  purposes,  it  remains  true  that  Chicago  is  so  many 
miles  west  of  New  York ;  that  childhood  and  youth  with  their 
unique  characteristics  precede  maturity  and  old  age,  rather 
than  the  opposite;  that  our  comparisons  of  similarities  and 
differences,  our  causal  expectancies,  our  quantitative  and 
qualitative  ordering,  our  numerical  distinctions,  our  syntheses 
into  things  and  persons,  are  relevant  to  the  world  with  which 
we  deal.  It  is  in  this  relevancy  that  their  convenience  lies 
for  our  practical  or  logical  procedure. 

Another  tendency  goes  to  the  opposite  extreme  and  would 
state  things  and  qualities  entirely  in  terms  of  abstract  rela- 
tions. For  this  type  of  attitude,  the  terms  are  constituted  by 
the  relations,  and  their  reality  lies  in  being  intersection  points 
of  relations.  This  attitude  hearkens  back  to  Schelling's 
philosophy  of  identity,  where  subjective  and  objective  entities 
are  supposed  to  be  equally  neutral  —  determined  purely  by 
their  logical  context.  As  recently  stated,  the  theory  is  the 


96  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

outcome  of  a  certain  extreme  type  of  intellectualism  which 
would  deal  with  reality  after  the  pattern  of  mathematics  and 
deduce  its  variety  from  a  few  simple  postulates.1  It  has 
transferred  the  ambiguity  of  mathematics  as  regards  the  exist- 
ence of  terms  to  the  conception  of  reality  in  general.  In  geome- 
try it  is  true  that  we  can  start  either  with  points  as  determining 
lines,  or  we  can  start  with  lines  as  determining  points.  The 
ambiguity  here  is  not  real  so  long  as  we  make  definite  our  initial 
postulates.  The  terms  and  the  relations  are  alike  constituted 
by  the  type  of  geometry  which  we  choose  to  have,  whether  a 
point  geometry  or  a  line  geometry  or  some  other  kind.  They 
are  predicative  functions  within  the  system  which  we  select 
or  posit.  Their  simplicity  and  complexity  are  determined  by 
their  function  within  the  system.  Thus  points  may  be  regarded 
as  uniquely  simple  when  conceived  as  determining  the  direc- 
tion of  a  line.  They  may  be  regarded  as  infinitely  complex 
when  conceived  as  the  intersection  loci  of  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  lines.  But  in  any  case  they  can  be  conceived  to  exist 
only  within  a  system,  as  uniquely  determined  by  its  postu- 
lates. No  blame  attaches,  therefore,  to  geometry  within  its 
own  domain. 

Neutralism  in  metaphysics  seems  to  owe  its  plausibility  to 
its  playing  upon  an  ambiguity,  at  one  time  translating  entities 
into  relations  and  at  another,  relations  into  entities,  without 
adhering  to  any  definite  set  of  postulates.  When  the  rela- 
tions are  made  the  center  of  regard,  the  entities  come  to  seem 
neutral.  Instead  of  realizing  that  such  emphasis  is  pragmatic, 

1  This  movement,  which  in  this  country  has  gone  under  the  name  of  "the 
new  realism,"  seems  to  have  found  its  inspiration  in  Bertrand  Russell's  "The 
Principles  of  Mathematics."  It  found  a  conflicting  expression  in  the  composite 
authorship  of  "The  New  Realism,  "  1912 ;  but  its  extreme  and  most  consistent 
statement  is  furnished  by  Edwin  B.  Holt's  "The  Concept  of  Consciousness, " 
1914.  Russell's  own  theory,  as  found  in  his  later  work,  Russell  and  White- 
head's  "Principia  Mathematica,"  makes  entities  "predicative  functions,"  which, 
so  far  as  I  can  understand  it,  would  be  similar  to  the  pragmatic  view.  R.  B- 
Perry,  in  his  "Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,"  1912,  takes  a  compromise 
position,  emphasizing  the  externality  of  the  cognitive  relation.  The  concep- 
tion of  neutralism,  which  characterizes  the  above  movement,  has  been  greatly 
influenced  by  William  James'  essays,  "Does  Consciousness  Exist?"  and  "A 
World  of  Pure  Experience,"  first  published  in  the  Jour.  Phil.  Psychol.  and  Sci. 
Meth.,  1904,  and  since  reprinted  in  "Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,"  1912. 
James  in  turn  had  been  influenced  by  Avenarius. 


KNOWING   THINGS  97 

convenient  for  a  certain  partial  purpose,  the  neutralist  makes 
it  absolute.  Hence  he  postulates  a  world  compounded  out 
of  neutrals  with  no  structure  or  potentialities,  but  constituted 
solely  by  relations.  Since  such  neutrals  must  be  indistinguish- 
able, they  are  regarded  as  simples.  The  fact  is  that  they  are 
nothing  at  all.  The  relations  have  become  the  only  reality. 
The  terms  or  substantives  have  been  exhausted  in  the  relations. 
The  former  are  so  completely  internal  that  they  cannot  point 
to  possibilities  in  other  contexts.  Not  even  the  grin  remains  of 
the  metaphysical  cat.  Or  at  any  rate,  it  is  supposed  to  be  purely 
a  function  of  position.  But  a  world  compounded  of  neutrals 
could  give  us  no  mosaics.  It  could  give  us  nothing  at  all. 
Reality  is  known,  not  in  "  neutral  mosaics,"  but  in  energy 
systems.  In  each  of  these  we  must  observe  the  unique  ensemble 
of  properties.  We  must  discover  empirically  how  far  certain 
characteristics  of  the  components  reappear  in  a  new  ensemble, 
and  how  far  the  new  ensemble  has  unique  characteristics  of  its 
own.  The  potentialities  can  never  be  said  to  be  exhausted  in 
any  one  system.  They  are  practically  infinite  in  the  possible 
qualitative  and  quantitative  variations  of  our  world.  It  is 
this  aspect  of  potentiality  which  gives  pragmatic  significance 
to  the  terms  thing  and  substance. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  conceive  the  entities  as  simple  and 
absolute,  then  the  relations  come  to  seem  neutral  and  accidental. 
They  can  make  no  difference  to  the  terms,  the  latter  remaining 
identical  in  all  the  variety  of  contexts.  The  external  combina- 
tion of  the  simples  in  certain  numbers  and  density  is  deemed 
adequate  to  account  for  the  complexity  of  reality  as  we  have 
it.  To  be  sure,  if  the  terms,  by  hypothesis,  equal  zero,  it  is 
hard  to  see  how  they  could  undergo  any  transformation  in 
varying  combinations;  and  if  the  relations  are  neutral,  too, 
what  remains  out  of  which  to  build  a  real  world  with  its  chang- 
ing variety?  As  over  against  such  a  world  of  pure  abstrac- 
tions, the  real  world  seems  to  be  one  of  creative  synthesis  and 
real  change.  While  we  must  approach  reality  by  means  of 
abstraction  in  trying  to  predict  and  control  its  flow,  this  always 
leaves  something  more,  and  this  more  constitutes  the  move- 
ment of  the  process.  We  cannot  compound  our  world  out  of 
abstract  universals.  Universals  are  edges,  handles  by  means 


98  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

of  which  reason  lays  hold  of  reality,  but  they  are  only  service- 
able when  they  dip  again  into  the  concrete  situations.  Our 
definitions  do  not  constitute  reality.  They  are  asymmetrical 
formulae,  which,  while  they  imply  and  lead  us  to  the  real  situa- 
tions, are  but  meager  abstracts  from  them. 

The  theory  of  external  relations  has  been  restricted  by  some 
to  the  experience  relation  or  the  relation  of  interest.  It  has 
been  held  that  it  makes  no  difference  to  reality  that  it  figures 
in  our  mental  systems.  The  knowledge  relation,  for  example, 
is  supposed  to  be  neutral.  This  attitude,  again,  seems  to  rest 
on  an  ambiguity.  If  what  is  meant  is  that  the  cognitive 
relation  does  not  affect  the  physical  qualities  of  the  things, 
it  is  in  the  main  true.  Our  taking  account  of  the  gravitational 
system  or  the  combining  valencies  of  chemical  elements  does 
not,  as  such,  alter  these  facts.  This  is  not  true,  however,  if 
the  knowledge  relation  has  to  do  with  the  condition  of  our  own 
organism.  The  knowledge  that  we  are  in  a  critical  condition 
may  accelerate  the  pulse  and  produce  other  complications. 
And  so  we  do  not  always  inform  the  patient  of  his  exact  state. 
If  what  is  meant,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  reality  would  be 
just  the  same  if  it  were  not  known,  we  are  manifestly  guilty  of 
a  false  abstraction.  If  reality  were  not  known,  one  important 
relation  would  be  lacking,  viz.  that  of  being  known,  with  all 
that  it  implies.  The  cognitive  system  is  just  as  real  as  any 
system.  The  qualification  of  interest  is  a  unique  qualification 
which  cannot  be  resolved  into  any  other  type  of  relation. 
Hence  this  relation  cannot  be  abstracted  from,  without  our 
subtracting  from  reality.  It  makes  a  real  difference  to  reality 
that  it  is  known  or  appreciated.1  It  is,  at  the  same  time,  the 
most  momentous  of  all  differences.  Without  the  relation  of 
interest,  reality  would  be  stripped  of  the  whole  world  of  signifi- 
cance, and  that  is  a  good  deal.  Back  of  the  "  new  "  neutralism 
there  lurks  an  antiquated  metaphysics,  that  of  abstract  things 
in  themselves  which  are  indifferent  to  contexts.  But  things 
are  what  they  are  known-as  in  energy  systems.  Otherwise 
they  are  intellectual  abstractions  and  no  longer  real.  And 

1  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Dewey  and  the  Chicago  School  have  emphasized  the  crea- 
tive contribution  of  the  cognitive  relation,  but  do  not  seem  clear  as  to  what  it 
contributes  or  rather  as  to  what  it  does  not  contribute. 


KNOWING   THINGS  99 

among  such  systems,  the  cognitive  system  as  a  unique  type  of 
selective  reaction,  figures  as  one. 

If  we  pass  now  to  the  types  of  relations,  we  can  see  again  the 
advantage  of  the  pragmatic  approach.  The  tendency  of  the 
human  mind  has  been  to  emphasize  some  types  of  relations  and 
to  ignore  other  types.  This  has  been  due  partly  to  tempera- 
ment, but  still  more  to  tradition.  Thus  we  find  that  some 
emphasize  static  relations  to  the  exclusion  of  transitive  rela- 
tions. While  the  former  type,  as  for  example  space  relations, 
has  its  significance  in  our  understanding  of  reality,  the  trans- 
itive relations  must  not  be  ignored.  Reality  is  essentially  on 
the  wing.  Movement,  confluence,  interpenetration,  change 
are  of  the  very  tissue  of  reality.  To  ignore  such  relations 
means  leaving  a  dead  skeleton  on  our  hands,  instead  of  the 
concreteness  and  glow  of  real  life.  Others,  again,  have  empha- 
sized the  analytic  as  over  against  the  synthetic  relations. 
They  have  been  obsessed  by  the  diversities  and  dissimilarities 
which  appear  in  our  experience.  Reality  for  them  has  crumbled 
into  a  granular  mass  of  elements  without  cement ;  and  the  task 
of  knowledge  has  become  correspondingly  hopeless.  But  in 
concrete  experience  there  are  the  synthetic  relations,  too  —  the 
similarities,  the  fusions,  the  causal  and  logical  implications. 
And  these  must  be  taken  at  their  face  value  as  well  as  the  dis- 
continuities. It  is  not  for  philosophy  to  make  a  world  in  accord- 
ance with  its  prejudices,  but  to  make  clear  the  constitution  of 
the  world  as  we  find  it.  And  here  the  connective  tissue,  which 
makes  our  world  hang  together,  has  as  much  claim  as  our 
abstract  terms.  Both  are  pragmatic  distinctions  in  the  serv- 
ice of  our  adjustments  to  the  world  of  our  experience.  Some, 
again,  have  been  fascinated  by  the  more  intimate  relations, 
the  through-and-through  relations  of  logic  and  aesthetics,  and 
they  have  no  patience  for  the  more  external  relations.  Here, 
again,  the  emphasis  is  true,  so  far  as  it  goes.  The  more  intimate 
relations  of  the  logical  and  aesthetic  types  are  genuinely  real. 
But  there  are  some  relations  which  seem  relatively  accidental 
to  the  facts  of  which  they  take  account.  Not  to  speak  of  the 
mechanical  relations  in  our  external  world  which  seem  alogical 
to  us  at  any  rate,  facts  in  our  experience  are  grouped,  through 
our  temporary  interests,  into  mosaics  of  contiguities  and  simi- 


100  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

larities,  in  a  manner  as  non-logical  as  it  is  irrelevant  to  their 
objective  connections.  Witness  the  topsy-turvy  drama  of  our 
dreams  and  the  motley  collection  of  items  in  a  daily  news- 
paper. 

There  are  certain  general  types  of  relations  which  furnish 
nets  for  holding  together  vast  masses  of  facts.  Such  are  the 
space  relations,  the  time  relations,  the  causal  relations,  and  the 
logical  relations.  The  space  relations  have  to  do  with  things 
in  space,  their  spread-outness  and  arrangement;  they  do  not, 
except  indirectly,  imply  anything  about  space  itself.  We 
abstract,  as  we  have  seen,  from  our  personal  perspectives  of 
orientation.  We  socialize  our  perceptual  relations  in  terms  of 
certain  artificial  units  of  measurement,  and  systematize  them 
into  certain  perspectives  on  the  basis  of  our  Cartesian  coordi- 
nates. But  however  artificial  may  be  our  units,  and  however 
conventional  our  coordinates,  it  is  the  space  relations  of  the 
real  world  with  its  pattern  of  parts  that  we  mean.  Again, 
in  our  temporal  relations,  we  abstract  from  our  individual 
perspectives,  with  their  dependence  upon  our  subjective  sense 
of  duration  and  our  immediate  individual  needs.  We  socialize 
our  perspectives  in  terms  of  certain  standard  units,  based  upon 
objective  periodicities,  such  as  the  earth-clock  or  sidereal  move- 
ments. Here,  again,  our  units  of  measurement  are  pragmatic, 
and  our  spatializing  of  temporal  sequences  into  one  dimension 
is  artificial.  But  what  we  mean  is  a  stream  of  real  change  and 
real  constancy  with  its  nexus  of  causal  and  significant  depend- 
ence, where  we  can,  in  a  measure,  orient  ourselves  to  the  pres- 
ent and  future  on  the  basis  of  the  recurrences  which  we  read  in 
the  past. 

The  concept  of  causality  comes  down  to  us  from  past  tradi- 
tion laden  with  many  ambiguities  and  contradictions.  The 
so  called  cause-and-effect  relation  has  been  regarded  by  some 
as  a  relation  of  identity  or  a  symmetrical  relation.  Like  all 
a  priori  statements,  this  needs  to  be  scrutinized.  It  does  not 
seem  that  the  effect  need  necessarily  be  identical  in  kind  and 
quantity  with  the  conditions  called  the  cause.  That  seems, 
indeed,  to  be  true  in  mechanical  series,  disregarding  the  loss 
of  energy  which  is  dissipated  as  heat.  In  the  case  of  chemical 
changes,  on  the  other  hand,  new  properties  may  appear  in  the 


KNOWING  THINGS  '/  \ \      101 

compound  which  could  not  have  been  predicted  analytically 
from  the  components  taken  separately.  Electrical  changes, 
again,  may  give  rise  to  molecular  motion  or  chemical  decom- 
position, as  well  as  to  further  electromagnetic  changes.  Chemi- 
cal changes  seem  to  give  rise  to  neural  changes,  and  neural 
changes  to  mental  processes ;  and  yet  it  does  not  seem  necessary 
to  suppose  that  breadstuff  is  mind  stuff. 

But  we  can  no  more  assume  that  cause  and  effect  must  be 
identical  in  space  and  in  time  than  in  kind.  Wherever  we 
have  action  conditioned  by  distance,  there  must  also  be  a 
difference  in  the  time  of  the  action  and  the  reaction.  No 
intelligible  conception  of  energy  has  been  able  to  avoid  a  cer- 
tain spatial  discreteness  of  centers.  Any  medium  invented 
in  the  service  of  a  block  continuity  must  in  turn  break  up  into 
discrete  impulses  in  order  to  account  for  our  actual  world. 
Let  us  leave  out  of  consideration  the  fictitious  ether;  for,  in 
the  words  of  Poincare,  "if  it  is  able  to  explain  everything,  this 
is  because  it  does  not  enable  us  to  decide  between  the  differ- 
ent hypotheses,  since  it  explains  everything  beforehand.  It 
therefore  becomes  useless."  l  Take  for  instance,  the  transmis- 
sion of  a  charge  from  one  electron  to  another.  "The  perturba- 
tion is  propagated  with  a  finite  velocity ;  it,  therefore,  reaches 
the  second  electron  only  when  the  first  has  long  ago  entered 
upon  its  rest.  This  second  electron,  therefore,  will  undergo, 
after  delay,  the  action  of  the  first,  but  will  certainly  at  that 
moment  not  react  upon  it,  since  around  this  first  electron 
nothing  any  longer  budges."  2  To  use  a  more  concrete  illus- 
tration from  the  same  author,  take  a  Hertzian  oscillator  such 
as  is  used  in  wireless  telegraphy :  "If  all  the  energy  issuing 
from  our  oscillator  falls  on  the  receiver,  this  will  act  as  if  it 
had  received  a  mechanical  shock,  which  will  represent  in  a  sense 
the  compensation  of  the  oscillator's  recoil ;  the  receiver  will 
move  on,  but  not  at  the  moment  when  the  oscillator  recoils. 
If  the  energy  propagates  itself  indefinitely  without  encounter- 
ing a  receiver,  the  compensation  will  never  occur." 2  One 
thing  seems  certain :  the  question  of  the  cause  and  effect  rela- 
tion can  no  longer  be  settled  a  priori,  but  must  be  settled  by 

1  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Vol.  LXX,  p.  348. 

2  Ibid.  p.  347. 


102  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

experimental  evidence.  To  say  that  the  cause  must  be  identical 
with  the  effect  is  as  unscientific  as  that  the  heavenly  bodies 
must  move  in  circles  because  these  are  the  most  perfect  figures ; 
or  that  the  universe  must  be  a  sphere  for  the  same  reason. 

We  cannot  say  a  priori  whether  a  certain  causal  series  is  re- 
versible or  irreversible.  In  physical  science  the  general  assump- 
tion is  that  changes,  except  for  the  dissipation  of  energy,  are 
reversible.  This  holds  in  mechanics.  It  also  holds  in  chem- 
ical transformations  where  the  assumption  is  that  no  number 
of  step-compounds  will  affect  the  final  constitution  of  the  com- 
pound in  question.  In  organic  and  psychological  series  we 
are  not  able  to  predict  such  reversibility.  Again,  as  regards 
the  continuity  of  the  causal  series,  we  cannot  read  off  the  steps 
of  the  series  from  the  characteristics  of  the  initial  situation. 
We  must  plot  our  curves  empirically  on  the  basis  of  the  changes 
as  observed.  Even  in  the  case  of  mechanical  motion,  it  has 
been  shown  that  particles  moving  with  a  velocity  approximat- 
ing that  of  light,  suddenly  acquire  an  increase  of  mass.  In 
the  compression  of  gases,  the  curve  is  constant  for  a  certain 
range  when  a  discontinuity  appears,  due  to  the  atomic  struc- 
ture. And  so  in  the  compression  of  solids.  It  has  been  shown 
that  metals  at  a  temperature  approximating  absolute  zero, 
change  in  conductivity,  the  latter  becoming  here  well-nigh 
absolute.  Our  theories  of  specific  changes,  therefore,  must 
be  based  upon  the  constitution  of  reality  as  actually  observed. 

On  account  of  the  difficulties  inherent  in  metaphysical  causa- 
tion, some  have  treated  causality  as  a  purely  phenomenal 
affair,  based  upon  the  fact  of  recurrence  of  perceptions  in  our 
experience,  and  the  habits  of  expectancy  produced  in  us. 
According  to  Hume,  all  that  we  observe  is  a  series  of  discrete 
events  having  no  other  connection,  of  which  we  can  take  account 
at  any  rate,  than  psychological  association.  But  obviously 
the  changes  and  constancies  which  we  observe  in  our  experience 
must  have  a  basis  in  the  actual  facts  themselves ;  else  the  causal 
predictions  would  not  be  relevant  to  the  world  with  which  we 
must  deal.  While  Hume  considers  single  beadlike  events, 
and  can  discover  no  stamp  of  necessary  connection  upon  them, 
it  has  been  suggested  that  the  causal  relation  must  be  duadic, 
i.e.  we  must  take  account  of  two  events  in  the  sequence,  in 


KNOWING  THINGS  103 

order  to  determine  the  series.1  Others,  again,  have  suggested 
that,  since  we  must  take  account  of  two  events  and  their  rela- 
tion, the  causal  series  is  a  triadic  affair.  In  neither  case  do  we 
escape  from  Hume's  phenomenalism.  At  best,  the  concept 
of  causality  as  it  has  come  down  to  us,  is  unsatisfactory  as  an 
explanatory  concept.  While  it  is  true  that  it  takes  time  for 
certain  changes  to  take  place,  it  is  not  the  aspect  of  a  series 
of  moments  or  positions  which  is  significant  for  understanding 
the  real  nexus  of  changes ;  it  is  not  the  moments  or  perceptual 
events  which  cause  each  other,  nor  do  two  or  more  moments 
determine  the  direction  of  the  real  changes.  They  are  snap- 
shots, rather,  of  the  order  of  real  changes,  —  photographic 
records,  as  it  were,  of  sequences  within  the  real  stream.  The 
series  of  perceptions  in  the  case  of  an  explosion,  —  the  per- 
ception of  the  dynamite  in  a  certain  position,  followed  by  the 
perception  of  the  igniting  of  the  fuse,  which  in  turn  is  followed 
by  the  perception  of  the  effects  of  the  explosion,  —  does  not 
explain  the  event.  For  this  we  must  understand  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  factors  involved  and  their  relation  to  each 
other. 

Science  has  substituted  for  the  old  conception  of  causality, 
whether  occult  or  phenomenal,  the  concept  of  an  energy  system. 
We  are  not  concerned  with  a  priori  duadic  or  triadic  abstract 
types,  but  with  certain  variables,  with  their  form  and  recurrence, 
as  we  find  them  in  concrete  dynamic  situations.  These  factors 
constitute  what  an  older  metaphysics  used  to  call  the  ground 
of  the  change.  In  the  simplest  type  of  energy  system,  that  of 
ordinary  kinetic  energy,  we  require  three  variables  which  we 
define  for  practical  purposes  as  constants,  viz.  mass,  space, 
and  time,  in  the  combining  relation  of  JMV2.  If  we  wish 
to  account  for  the  behavior  of  falling  bodies,  we  use  the  constant 
for  gravity  in  the  particular  locality;  we  ascertain  the  height 
from  which  the  body  falls,  and  we  measure  its  velocity  in  the 
sequence  of  moments  of  the  temporal  order.  What  is  signifi- 
cant here  is  not  that  the  body  occupies  the  successive  positions 
of  A  —  A'  —  A"  —  A"1 ',  but  that  we  have  the  constant, 
gravity,  acting  under  certain  spatial  and  temporal  conditions. 

1  See  the  articles  by  W.  H.  Sheldon  on  "A  Theory  of  Causation,"  Jour.  Phil. 
PsychoL  and  Sci.  Metk.,  1914. 


104  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

It  is  this  which  gives  us  the  law  for  the  whole  series  of  events. 
We  might  call  this  particular  situation  triadic,  since  it  can  be 
defined  in  terms  of  three  variables.  But  the  variables  which 
are  necessary  must  be  ascertained  empirically  for  each  unique 
type  of  situation.  They  become  more  complex  for  chemical 
compounds,  where  some  eighty  different  elements  with  their 
combining  properties  must  be  taken  into  account,  in  their  vary- 
ing quantitative  combinations.  In  the  case  of  electric  currents, 
we  must  take  account,  not  merely  of  the  properties  of  electricity, 
but  of  the  conductive  medium  through  which  it  travels.  In 
the  case  of  mental  processes,  we  must  take  account,  not  merely 
of  the  variables  of  mental  constitution  as  conditioned  by  innate 
and  derived  tendencies,  but  of  the  physiological  conditions,  and 
of  the  environmental  situation ;  so  we  can  see  that  our  system 
here  becomes  decidedly  complex.  But  the  significant  aspect 
for  us  in  this  connection  is  that  science  makes  properties  its 
starting  point.  To  try  to  reduce  properties  in  turn  to  causa- 
tion would  involve  an  endless  and  useless  regress.  We  may, 
of  course,  analyze  the  more  complex  systems  into  simpler  com- 
ponents. We  may  find  that  certain  properties  of  the  more 
complex  system  are  not  present  in  the  more  abstract  compo- 
nents ;  that  they  are  in  some  sense,  therefore,  unique  functions 
of  the  system  itself.  But  that  does  not  make  such  properties 
less  real  in  the  system  where  we  find  them.  Some  of  the 
properties  of  water  are  unique.  They  are  not  characteristics 
of  hydrogen  or  oxygen,  but  they  are  none  the  less  real  char- 
acteristics of  water.  Perhaps  some  day  we  may  be  able  to 
explain  gravity  by  means  of  an  electrical  theory;  but  in  the 
relations  in  which  we  now  know  it,  it  will  remain  just  as  real 
as  before.  What  is  essential  for  explanation  is  to  ascertain 
the  properties  which  are  characteristic  of  the  factors  as  enter- 
ing into  a  definite  system,  whether  that  system  be  a  chemical 
compound  or  human  society.  Having  found  their  combining 
form  and  their  degree  of  recurrence,  we  can  then  control  the 
situation  on  the  basis  of  our  knowledge. 

Whether,  again,  changes  proceed  by  infinitesimal  increments 
or  by  finite  drops  is  an  empirical  matter,  and  not  to  be  de- 
duced from  a  priori  considerations.  The  evidence  seems  now 
to  point  to  definite  finite  quanta.  Nor  have  we  any  right  to 


KNOWING   THINGS  105 

assume  an  infinite  series  of  changes  of  a  certain  type  unless  we 
deal  with  a  pure  abstraction  such  as  Newton's  first  law  of 
motion ;  and  even  this  we  know  now  holds  only  for  ordinary 
velocities  where  mass  is  constant.  We  cannot  predicate  abso- 
lute continuity  for  any  concrete  series  of  changes.  We  cannot 
say,  for  example,  that  A'  shall  differ  from  A,  the  preceding 
moment  of  change,  merely  in  position.  How  it  differs  must  be 
empirically  ascertained.  We  have  had  to  relearn  again  and 
again  that  our  formulae  hold  only  for  a  certain  range  of  tem- 
perature, pressure,  and  motion.  And,  as  Poincare  has  pointed 
out,  with  extreme  cosmic  changes  in  these  general  conditions, 
all  our  formulaB  might  prove  false.  They  are  pragmatic 
merely,  and  rest  upon  a  certain  faith  in  the  practical  stability 
of  the  cosmic  system  of  which  we  are  a  part.  There  is  plenty 
of  room,  therefore,  for  skepticism  if  one  chooses  to  indulge 
in  it,  though  the  form  may  be  different  from  the  old  Humian 
kind.  Most  of  us,  however,  are  willing  to  live  by  faith,  so 
long  as  we  can  approximately  find  our  way  in  the  complex  web 
of  reality. 

It  will  be  seen  now  that  the  old  time  distinction  of  cause  and 
effect  is  a  purely  pragmatic  one.  It  is  due  to  a  certain  psycho- 
logical emphasis  which  may  be  useful  for  certain  purposes,  but 
cannot  be  regarded  as  a  final  explanation.  Whether  we  regard 
the  hydrogen  properties  or  oxygen  properties  or  temperature 
conditions  as  the  cause  of  water  will  be  due  to  the  steps  which 
we  select  in  our  procedure,  and  our  psychological  bias.  Whether 
we  regard  the  productivity  of  the  soil  or  the  facilities  of  trans- 
portation or  the  availability  of  power  or  the  thrift  and  intelli- 
gence of  the  people  as  the  cause  of  a  country's  prosperity  is 
psychological.  The  real  explanation  must  be  found  in  the 
unique  ensemble  of  the  various  factors  with  their  properties. 
Cause  and  effect,  therefore,  whatever  value  they  may  have 
from  a  provisional  point  of  view,  must  be  understood  in  terms 
of  their  ground  or  the  energy  system  of  which  they  are  partial 
emphases. 

Besides  the  three  general  types  of  relations  already  men- 
tioned, viz.  temporal,  spatial,  and  energetic,  we  must  add  a 
fourth  general  type,  namely,  relations  of  interest.  Our  being 
interested  in  things  does  not,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  directly 


106  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

alter  the  physical  qualities  of  things,  but  their  significance 
depends  upon  their  relation  to  interest  contexts,  such  as  the 
cognitive,  aesthetic,  and  volitional.  The  interest  relations 
may  be  systematic,  as  in  the  working  out  of  our  logical,  aesthetic 
and  economic  purposes,  or  they  may  be  merely  additive.  Any 
fact  can  be  joined  subjectively  with  any  other  fact  by  such 
bonds  as  and  or  with  or  plus  or  minus  or  other  relations  of  ex- 
ternal interest.  We  must  remember,  however,  that  these  rela- 
tions whether  additive  or  systematic,  do  not  affect  the  existence 
of  our  external  sense-things  and  their  properties.  Things 
may  exist  in  a  double  location :  they  may  exist  in  their  own 
physical  contexts,  and  at  the  same  time  exist  in  our  contexts 
of  significance.  If  we  take  into  account  the  individual  learn- 
ing process,  as  contrasted  with  the  social  system  of  experience, 
this  becomes  a  threefold  location,  as  the  individual  must  ascer- 
tain and  locate  in  his  own  experience,  the  results  of  social  experi- 
ence which  in  turn  must  take  account  of  the  special  contexts 
of  nature. 

We  may  take  a  fact  over  and  over  again  in  our  logical  systems 
without  transmuting  the  physical  properties  of  the  fact.  Their 
meaning  is  colored  by  the  significance  of  the  special  system, 
but  their  physical  color  remains  the  same.  It  is  only  altered 
by  physical  relations.  It  is  true  that  logical  systems  are  not 
closed  systems.  Our  thinking  connects  with  our  sensory 
centers,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  motor  centers,  on  the  other 
hand.  It  thus  not  only  receives  its  data  from  the  larger  world, 
but  through  its  motor  control  can  effect  changes  in  that  world. 
What  we  are  here  concerned  with,  however,  is  the  logical  type 
of  system  in  its  abstractness.  And  here  it  is  true  that  we  may 
carry  on  our  operations  of  thought  without  affecting  the  exist- 
ence or  qualities  of  the  things  upon  which  we  operate.  The 
great  value  of  the  logical  system  is  that  by  thus  analyzing  our 
world  and  selecting  its  relevant  features,  we  are  able  to  sub- 
stitute these  few  features  for  the  concrete  complex  of  experi- 
ence. This  means  both  increased  insight  and  increased  effi- 
ciency. Of  course  to  carry  on  this  logical  analysis  we  may 
find  it  useful  actually  to  decompose  and  synthesize  the  things 
with  which  we  deal.  But  that  is  another  story,  and  has  to  do 
with  concrete  energy  relations  and  not  merely  logical  relations. 


KNOWING   THINGS  107 

This  is  true,  likewise,  in  considering  the  energy  effects  of  think- 
ing as,  for  example,  the  using  up  of  food  energy  and  the  produc- 
tion of  heat,  as  well  as  of  the  direct  effect  of  our  emotional 
and  volitional  attitudes  upon  various  physiological  functions. 
Here  we  are  dealing  not  with  logical  systems  as  such,  but  in 
relation  to,  and  as  aspects  of,  the  organic  system  of  behavior 
of  which  they  are  a  part. 

We  must  be  careful  not  to  confuse  purely  logical  relations 
with  energy  relations.  Bradley  seems  to  do  this  when  he  insists 
that  we  cannot  take  facts  over  again  in  our  logical  experiments 
of  analysis  and  synthesis  without  transmuting  them.  We  do 
indeed  transmute  their  significance  in  so  experimenting  with 
them.  But  their  energy  properties  and  relations  are  only 
transmuted,  in  so  far  as  they  are  transmuted,  in  their  energy 
systems.  Colors  do  not  change  their  tint  or  hue  by  our  think- 
ing about  them.  They  do  so  only  as  a  result  of  physical  and 
physiological  changes.  On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  treat 
the  world  of  energies  with  its  transmutations  as  a  merely  logi- 
cal type  of  system,  compounded  of  logical  entities.  While  it 
is  true  that  in  our  logical  universe  of  discourse  we  can  take  our 
entities  and  relations  over  and  over  again  in  various  contexts 
without  affecting  their  character,  we  cannot  postulate  a  priori 
that  we  can  do  so  in  the  concrete  world.  In  our  energy  sys- 
tems we  must  discover  just  what  difference  it  makes  that  our 
elements  enter  into  different  combinations,  and  must  formulate 
our  laws  accordingly. 

Things  and  Values  1 

The  unique  contribution  which  is  made  by  the  experience 
relation  is  the  world  of  values.  Values  have  their  basis  in  the 
relation  of  objects,  with  their  qualities,  to  the  realization  of  the 
will.  They  involve  two  relatively  independent  variables  — 
conative  tendencies  with  their  organization  on  the  one  hand, 
and  feelings,  with  their  physiological  conditions,  on  the  other 
hand.  The  latter  are  bound  up  with  the  much  despised  organic 
sensations  of  the  vital  organs  below  the  diaphragm.  The 
former  imply,  on  the  one  hand,  instinctive  tendencies  and,  on 

J,For  a  fuller  discussion  see  "Value  and  Social  Interpretation,"  The  American 
Journal  of  Sociology,  1915. 


108  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

the  other,  tendencies  derived  from  the  organization  of  instinct 
into  social  experience.  Both  variables  are  essential;  but,  of 
the  two,  organized  tendency  is  the  more  constant  and  impor- 
tant, and  tends  to  grow  more  so  with  the  organization  of  expe- 
rience. Feelings  tend  to  fluctuate  with  organic  conditions. 
They  are  especially  prominent  in  the  case  of  obstructed  activity, 
and  tend  to  approximate  zero  with  the  complete  organization 
of  activity.  But  the  presence  of  feeling,  or  at  least  its  pos- 
sibility, must  be  regarded  as  an  essential  condition  of 
value,  for  an  activity  which  can  no  longer  be  felt  can  hardly 
be  spoken  of  as  realization  or  as  a  value  activity. 

There  has  been  considerable  dispute  as  regards  the  qualities 
of  values.  Some  have  contended  with  Socrates  in  the  "Pro- 
tagoras" and  with  Bentham  that  there  are  only  two  kinds  of 
values,  pleasant  and  unpleasant,  though  these  may  vary  indef- 
initely in  quantity.  Pleasantness  and  unpleasantness,  how- 
ever, must  be  regarded  as  the  names  of  two  fundamental 
classes  of  values  rather  than  as  an  analysis  of  the  qualities 
of  values.  If  values  depend,  as  we  have  maintained,  upon  the 
two  variables  of  conative  tendency  and  feeling,  there  must, 
owing  to  the  variation  and  complexity  of  these  variables,  be 
an  indefinite  number  of  value  qualities.  This  seems  to  agree 
with  what  we  find  in  concrete  experience,  where  we  discriminate 
an  indefinite  number  of  classes  of  value,  in  accordance  with  the 
varying  types  of  activities  and  emotional  states. 

The  question  naturally  arises  as  to  the  relation  of  value 
qualities  to  other  types  of  qualities,  such  as  sense  qualities. 
Some  have  suggested  that  value  qualities  should  be  called 
tertiary  qualities.  This  assumes  the  distinction  between 
primary  and  secondary  sense  qualities.  This  ranking,  however, 
is  purely  pragmatic,  as  we  have  shown  elsewhere.  The  so- 
called  secondary  qualities  are  just  as  real  as  the  so-called  pri- 
mary qualities,  though  the  latter  may  be  more  important  for 
certain  purposes.  Nor  can  we  admit  the  implication  that 
value  qualities  are  merely  more  subjective  sense  qualities. 
They  are  not  sense  qualities  at  all.  They  belong  to  a  different 
system  of  reality.  While  sense  qualities  vary  independently 
of  our  emotional-volitional  situations,  values  vary  precisely 
with  the  unique  character  of  these  situations.  We  may  have 


KNOWING   THINGS  109 

passed  from  enthusiastic  enjoyment  of  ragtime  to  utter  bore- 
dom of  that  sort  of  thing,  but  the  sense  qualities  of  ragtime  have 
not  changed  in  the  meantime.  Again,  the  world  of  values 
grows  with  experience.  Our  reflection  upon  values  is  itself  a 
source  of  values,  but  our  reflection  upon  sense  qualities  does 
not  alter  their  character. 

While  value  qualities  must  not  be  confused  with  sense  quali- 
ties, they  are  none  the  less  real.  They  are  indeed  qualifications 
of  the  objective  world.  We  cannot  admit  that  they  are  mere 
arbitrary  additions  to  our  world,  irrespective  of  its  fundamental 
constitution.  They  are  gifts  in  no  other  sense  than  sense 
qualities  are  gifts  in  their  own  unique  systems.  They  are 
unique  characteristics  within  certain  relations,  implying  a 
specific  type  of  organization.  They  are  just  as  much  a  part  of 
the  real  world  under  their  own  conditions  as  are  the  unique 
properties  of  water  within  their  own  special  system.  They 
may  even  be  said  to  reveal  the  richness  of  the  world  to  a  greater 
degree  than  the  sense  qualities.  They  give  us  what  may  be 
called  the  inwardness  of  reality,  —  the  sense  of  participation 
in  activities  as  opposed  to  being  a  mere  mechanical  agent  or 
a  mere  neutral  spectator  like  the  Sankyah  soul. 

Values  permit  of  their  own  type  of  organization.  It  is  not 
true  that  value  qualities  are  merely  private  and  fleeting.  They 
are  capable  of  comparison  and  agreement;  they  are  socially 
predictable.  And  so  we  have  our  cookery,  our  science  of 
economics,  and  our  art,  which  would  be  impossible  if  values 
were  of  a  merely  unique,  private,  and  irreversible  character. 
They  may,  indeed,  be  more  permanent  than  sense  things. 
Our  biological  values  have  a  high  degree  of  uniformity  in  the 
development  of  the  race.  Even  our  aesthetic  and  ethical  values 
show  a  considerable  constancy.  Greek  art  is  still  beautiful 
to  us,  and  the  ethical  ideals  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  are  still 
standard  for  us.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  chemical 
elements,  like  radium,  would  seem  to  be  undergoing  a  radical 
change  as  regards  their  qualities.  Indeed,  the  possibility  of 
social  structure  —  our  mutual  confidence  on  which  credit  is 
based,  and  our  mutual  appreciation  on  which  friendship  and 
art  depend  —  presupposes  a  certain  constancy  and  agreement 
as  regards  values.  There  are,  no  doubt,  the  more  transient 


110  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

values  which  exist  but  for  the  moment.  There  is,  too,  the 
uniqueness  which  must  go  with  individual  organization  and 
with  the  peculiar  context  of  living,  social  experience  of  which  we 
are  a  part.  Our  agreements  and  laws  are,  indeed,  abstractions 
—  nets  in  which  we  try  to  hold  the  concrete,  real  world.  But 
this  applies  also  to  other  types  of  qualitative  selection.  In 
any  case  it  is  the  more  stable  and  universal  features  which  give 
significance  to  the  more  unique  and  fleeting  ones. 

Looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  world  of  values, 
things  become  merely  instrumental.  They  are  the  circum- 
stances and  accidents  to  be  controlled  and  made  over,  the  raw 
material  for  creative  transformation.  We  cannot  attribute 
value  to  things  on  their  own  account  as  we  can  to  selves.  The 
values  of  things  are  derived  from  their  being  taken  up  into  the 
process  of  conscious  realization.  Agnosticism  is  quite  right 
in  maintaining  that  we  cannot  know  the  inwardness  of  things, 
but  this  is  because  they  have  no  inwardness.  Things  have  no 
halo  of  value  on  their  own  account.  The  values  of  things 
exist,  as  Hegel  would  say,  an  sich,  and  not  fur  sich;  that  is, 
they  exist  for  the  spectator,  and  not  for  the  things  themselves. 
At  least  so  it  seems  to  us  in  our  limited  perspective.  In  the 
world  of  values,  man  and  conscious  wills  like  his  are  the  measure 
of  things. 

Those  idealists,  who  have  made  value  the  ultimate  category 
of  existence  and  who  have  insisted  that  only  the  intrinsically 
valuable  is  real,  have  been  forced  by  their  logic  to  deny  reality 
to  things  as  contrasted  with  values.  Thus  T.  H.  Green,  hav- 
ing assumed  that  the  universe  is  ultimately  a  unity  of  meaning, 
that  the  reality  of  things  is  constituted  by  reflective  experi- 
ence, and  finding  that  nature  cannot  itself  be  regarded  as  such 
an  experience,  can  give  things  a  locus  only  in  our  own  and  the 
absolute  experience.  Plato,  likewise,  having  assumed  that 
only  worth  is  real,  is  forced  to  accord  to  the  world  of  perceptual 
things  only  a  phenomenal  reality.  The  real  world  becomes  a 
world  of  normative  ideals  of  which  the  concrete  world  is  only 
a  poor  imitation.  Nature  can  be  acknowledged  as  real  only 
as  it  is  reduced  to  mathematical  models.  But  while  we  must 
insist  upon  the  reality  of  values  in  their  own  unique  systems, 
we  must  also  admit  that  things  have  qualities  and  relations  of 


KNOWING   THINGS  111 

their  own  in  other  systems  which  we  must  acknowledge.  It 
is  indeed  through  the  existence  of  such  systems  as  the  mechani- 
cal, chemical,  and  biological,  that  value  realization  is  made 
possible,  however  much  the  existence  of  value  systems  enhances 
the  retrospect  and  prospect.  It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however, 
that  the  overemphasis  of  the  idealist  has  been  called  forth  by 
the  understatement  and  skepticism  of  the  materialist,  and 
historically  has  constituted  a  compensation  for  the  latter's 
depreciation  of  values.  Nor  has  materialism  of  this  sort  been 
confined  to  a  few  philosophers.  If  so,  it  would  be  compara- 
tively harmless,  as  but  few  can  understand  them.  The  eternal 
protest  of  the  poets  and  prophets  is  rather  against  the  material- 
istic deadness  and  commonplace  which  tends  to  overlay  the 
dull  routine  of  human  society,  and  which  makes  us  act  as  though 
merely  things  were  real,  and  as  though  selves  were  mere  things 
to  be  used  accordingly.  As  against  this  general  social  tendency, 
we  need  the  romantic  movements  which  emphasize  that,  in 
human  economy  at  least,  things  must  be  instrumental  to  values. 
This  may  also  be  true  in  the  larger  cosmic  economy.  We  know 
that  within  human  control,  values  may  condition  the  survival 
of  things.  This  happens  whenever  the  will  selects  on  the  basis 
of  ideals.  Whether  a  statue  shall  survive  as  a  statue  depends 
upon  its  formal  fitness  rather  than  upon  the  properties  of  its 
material,  which  may  be  Parian  marble.  Whether  a  grove  or 
a  hill  survives  may  depend  upon  its  relation  to  human  purposes. 
If  there  is  a  conscious  power  that  exercises  selection  in  the  larger 
universe,  then  survival  in  the  whole  of  existence  as  well  as  in 
the  world  of  human  control,  may  depend  upon  its  value  fit- 
ness —  its  harmony  with  an  ideal  constitution. 

To  us,  indeed,  natural  beauty  seems  an  accidental  framing  of 
the  contexts  of  our  environment.  We  limit  nature  arbitrarily, 
it  seems,  by  our  interest,  and  within  those  limits  find  an  aesthetic 
value  realized,  as  in  a  mountain  or  lake  or  woodland  scene. 
In  the  case  of  artificial  beauty,  on  the  other  hand,  the  will  is 
able  to  create  its  own  conditions.  It  can  eliminate  a  great 
deal  of  detail  and  thus  produce  greater  clearness  and  distinct- 
ness than  the  natural  object  usually  has.  But  both  artificial 
and  natural  beauty  must  suggest  life  and  energy  in  harmonious 
interplay  and  equilibrium  in  order  to  fulfill  the  demands  of 


112  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

the  aesthetic  instinct.  Both  depend,  in  the  last  analysis,  upon 
formal  laws  which  are  forced  upon  our  experience  and  which 
must  somehow  be  inherent  in  the  structure  of  reality.  We  are 
somehow,  in  the  process  of  cosmic  evolution,  made  for  the 
sunset  as  well  as  the  sunset  for  us.  Nature  but  reveals  through 
human  nature  its  immanent  tendency  toward  order  and  beauty. 
In  the  words  of  the  Swedish  poet,  Runeberg :  "Art  does  not 
raise  nature  and  it  does  not  make  it  more  majestic  than  it 
really  is,  but  it  raises  human  nature  to  see  its  own  glory  and 
the  glory  of  the  world  —  it  helps  to  see  right  through  the  con- 
fusion of  the  external." 


PART  II 
CONSCIOUSNESS   AND   MIND 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  CONCEPT  OP  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Examination  of  Theories 

THE  question  confronts  us  at  the  outset :  what  sort  of  reality 
can  we  assign  to  consciousness?  Is  it  an  energy  or  thing  — 
another  kind  of  thing,  perhaps,  from  the  world  of  things  it 
illumines?  Anaxagoras  evidently  felt  after  some  entity 
which  he  could  set  over  against  the  world  of  ordinary  things. 
So  he  invented  Nous  '  infinite  and  self-ruled,  mixed  with  noth- 
ing, the  thinnest  of  all  things  and  the  purest;  and  it  has  all 
knowledge  about  everything  and  the  greatest  strength;  and 
Nous  has  power  over  all  things,  over  the  whole  revolution,  so 
that  it  began  to  revolve  in  the  beginning ;  and  it  set  in  order 
all  things  that  were  to  be  and  that  were ;  and  all  Nous  is  alike, 
both  the  greater  and  the  smaller/  Strange  attempt  this  to  get 
away  from  the  world  of  quantitative  processes,  but  lacking  the 
tools  to  do  so ;  to  find  something  which  does  not  move  and  yet 
is  the  source  of  motion.  This  idea  of  something  which  is  not 
movement  and  yet  the  source  of  movement  has  been  stated  re- 
cently, in  modern  terms,  by  the  late  Professor  C.  S.  Minot : 
"The  universe  consists  of  force  and  consciousness.  As  con- 
sciousness by  our  hypothesis  can  initiate  the  change  of  the  form 
of  energy,  it  may  be  that  without  consciousness  the  universe 
would  come  to  absolute  rest." 1  But  this  ambiguous  status  of 
consciousness,  as  that  which  is  and  is  not  a  thing,  which  does 
not  move  and  yet  is  the  source  of  movement,  is  not  very  con- 
sistent or  satisfactory.  We  must  locate  consciousness  in  one 
category  or  the  other,  and  to  that  end  we  must  make  our 
concepts  more  clear  and  definite.  Ostwald  frankly  treats  con- 
sciousness as  a  form  of  energy  convertible  into  other  energies. 
But  his  tools  have  not  enabled  him  to  deal  with  consciousness 

i  Science,  N.S.,  Vol.  XVI,  No.  392,  p.  26. 
115 


116  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

as  such.  What  he  has  dealt  with  is  physiological  and  psycho- 
logical processes.  Now  I  freely  admit  that  we  may  look  upon 
psychological  processes  as  energetic.  I  can  see  nothing  in  the 
way  of  such  a  view  except  prejudice. 

The  insistence  in  recent  times  that  mental  processes  are  not 
quantitatively  comparable  is  due  to  the  confusing  of  processes 
with  the  consciousness  of  processes.  The  consciousness  of  blue 
or  pain  or  effort  is  not  a  quantitative  affair.  But  the  processes 
themselves  are,  however  crudely,  quantitatively  comparable. 
Wherever  you  can  apply  the  category  of  more  or  less,  you  have 
quantity.  There  are  intensive  quantities,  as  well  as  extensive. 
That  we  cannot  in  the  former  case  superimpose  a  quantitative 
unit  does  not  prove  that  they  do  not  differ  in  quantity.  This 
is  merely  a  matter  of  the  exactness  of  the  quantitative  com- 
parison. Fechner's  mistake  was  not  in  regarding  psychological 
processes  as  quantitative,  but  in  trying  to  equate  processes 
where  quantitative  units  are  possible  with  those  where  no  such 
units  are  possible.  It  is  no  argument  against  the  quantitative 
character  of  mental  processes  that  they  also  differ  qualitatively 
and  that  you  cannot  equate  quantity  and  quality.  Neither 
can  you  do  so  in  chemistry.  There,  too,  you  have  to  recognize 
certain  original  elements  as  well  as  quantitative  relations. 

Now  all  psychological  processes,  be  they  sensational,  affec- 
tional,  intellectual  or  volitional,  differ  in  intensity,  as  well  as 
in  kind.  Bergson's  attempt  to  reduce  psychic  intensity  to  a 
qualitative  manifold  is  due  to  his  reading  the  complexity  of 
the  physiological  conditions  into  the  psychological  result. 
We  must  take  the  psychic  process  for  what  it  appears  to  in- 
trospection, irrespective  of  the  antecedents.  The  variation  in 
intensity,  moreover,  bears  definite  and  describable  relations 
to  physical  and  physiological  conditions.  Hence  I  see  no  reason 
why  we  should  not  use  energy  as  a  term  for  such  differences. 
Pressures  may  be  heavier  or  lighter  without  varying  in  kind. 
Colors  may  be  brighter  or  fainter,  pains  may  be  intenser  or 
weaker,  memories  may  last  longer  or  shorter,  ideas  may  be  more 
or  less  vivid,  the  feeling  of  effort  may  vary  in  strength.  Where- 
ever  you  can  vary  as  regards  more  or  less,  without  variation 
in  quality,  there  you  have  quantity.  What  else  would  you 
call  it?  Whether  there  is  also  in  such  cases  variation  in  the 


THE   CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  117 

quality  of  the  psychological  processes,  introspection  must  de- 
cide. There  is  no  other  judge.  This  difference  in  intensity 
must  not  be  confused  with  our  spreading  out  our  qualitative 
series,  such  as  our  color  series,  in  space  in  order  to  schematize 
the  qualitative  relations.  Though  our  figure  here  is  spatial, 
that  does  not  make  the  relations  quantitative.  Distance  here 
is  merely  figurative  for  the  direction  of  difference  of  quality. 

What  I  have  said  in  regard  to  perceptual  contents,  I  might 
have  said  in  regard  to  will.  Will  or  desire  is  capable  of  being 
more  or  less,  even  if  we  cannot  measure  it  with  exactness. 
All  psychological  processes  are  conative  processes.  They  in- 
volve motor  tendency  and  this  varies  in  strength.  The  mis- 
take has  not  been  in  regarding  conative  tendencies  or  motives 
as  differing  in  strength,  but  in  regarding  them  as  forces  in- 
dependent of  the  ego  and  acting  upon  the  ego.  Whether  will, 
or  conative  tendency,  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  psychic 
processes,  is  an  energy  different  from  electrical  and  nervous 
energy ;  how  it  interacts  with  other  forms ;  whether  it  is  radio- 
active or  has  some  still  subtler  mode  of  making  a  difference; 
whether  it  acts  at  a  distance,  —  this  would  have  to  be  dealt 
with  in  a  discussion  on  energy  and  not  on  consciousness.  At 
present  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  mind-stuff  is  a  distinctive 
type  of  energy,  however  ignorant  we  may  be  of  its  relation  to 
other  energies.  Moreover,  it  seems  evident  that  conative 
tendency  is  not  always,  and  therefore  need  not  be,  conscious 
tendency,  and  that  mind  stuff  and  consciousness  do  not  neces- 
sarily coincide.  Whether,  again,  all  energy  can  be  reduced  to 
one  kind  and  whether  will  is  that  fundamental  kind,  is  a  ques- 
tion to  be  decided  by  scientific  convenience  and  quite  distinct 
from  the  problem  of  consciousness. 

While  we  must  acknowledge,  then,  that  conscious  processes 
are  more  or  less,  that  they  have  describable  relations  or  con- 
tinuities with  other  processes,  such  as  physiological  and  chemi- 
cal, and  that  therefore  we  may  extend  the  term  energy  to  cover 
these,  we  cannot  on  that  account  admit  that  consciousness  as 
such  is  capable  of  more  or  less,  any  more  than  of  qualitative 
difference.  Is  the  consciousness  of  extended  or  heavy  or  colored 
things  an  extended  or  heavy  or  colored  consciousness?  Is  the 
consciousness  of  a  greater  intensity  a  more  intense  consciousness 


118  A    REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

than  the  consciousness  of  a  less  intensity?  I  see  no  need  for 
assuming  a  difference  in  consciousness.  The  variations  in  kind 
and  in  intensity  can  all  be  accounted  for  as  due  to  variations 
in  the  complexity  and  intensity  of  the  processes,  conditioned 
by  the  cortex  in  the  last  analysis.  There  is  no  need  in  du- 
plicating these  differences  on  the  side  of  consciousness.  It  is 
easier  to  suppose  consciousness  a  constant  and  regard  the 
variations  as  due  to  physiological  and  conative  processes  than 
to  duplicate  the  processes  by  making  consciousness  an  energy. 
But  if  the  fact  of  consciousness  does  not  vary,  either  as  regards 
quantity  or  quality,  with  the  variation  of  energetic  processes, 
then  we  may  be  sure  that  it  is  not  itself  an  energy  or  a  function 
of  energy,  but  must  be  treated  as  an  independent  dimension  of 
reality.  All  our  scientific  evidence,  introspective,  biological, 
and  pathological  fits  in  with  this  view.  It  is  with  the  com- 
plexity of  biological  structure  that  consciousness  has  come  into 
evidence ;  and  the  differentiation  of  conscious  processes  in  the 
way  of  sensations,  memory,  reasoning,  has  followed  the  growth 
in  complexity  of  biological  structure.  And,  again,  with  fatigue, 
disease  and  degeneracy  of  such  structures,  the  complex  psy- 
chical processes  fail  to  operate.  When  we  are  tired,  we  fail 
to  recall  a  familiar  name,  though  we  are  conscious  enough  at 
the  time.  Disease  may  make  us  lose  our  visual  and  auditory 
images,  may  make  us  fail  to  think  coherently,  and  to  regulate 
our  activities  in  a  purposive  and  orderly  way,  though  we  are 
as  conscious  as  ever.  The  energy  and  organization  of  conscious 
processes,  therefore,  cannot  be  found  on  the  side  of  consciousness. 

Moreover,  however  much  continuity  there  may  be  on  the 
side  of  the  energetic  conditions  of  consciousness,  consciousness 
as  an  effective  factor  no  doubt  appears  at  a  leap  —  as  sensations 
of  light  when  the  structural  conditions  of  the  eye  are  complete, 
or  of  tone  with  the  presence  of  the  basilar  membrane,  or  of 
electricity  when  the  proper  motion  or  chemical  conditions  are 
furnished,  with  the  difference  that,  while  in  the  above  cases  the 
relations  are  energetic,  the  energies  varying  in  some  quantita- 
tive proportion,  in  the  case  of  consciousness  the  category  of 
energy  is  not  applicable. 

Theories  which  try  to  define  consciousness  in  terms  of  energy 
must  somehow  surreptitiously  add  consciousness  at  some  stage 


THE    CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  119 

of  the  process.  They  cannot  derive  it  from  energy.  It  is  not 
clear  that  the  energetic  equivalences  are  in  any  wise  affected 
by  consciousness  being  added.  The  adding  of  the  fact  of 
consciousness  is  sometimes  concealed  by  using  the  term  poten- 
tial which  covers  so  many  sins.  Certain  energetic  situations 
are  potentially  conscious  only  on  condition  that  you  add  con- 
sciousness. Certain  optical  processes  of  light  waves,  retinal 
and  cerebral  changes  are  sensations  of  light  only  when  you 
add  consciousness  to  the  situation.  In  the  same  way,  certain 
dynamic  tensions  in  connection  with  the  brain  are  not  as  such 
consciousness.  This  must  be  added  in  order  for  processes  to  be 
aware  of  themselves  as  association  and  meaning. 

It  has  become  the  fashion  now  to  state  consciounsess  in  terms 
of  empirical  situations  of  experience  rather  than  in  terms  of  a 
thing  or  energy  outside  experience.  Here,  again,  there  has 
been  difference  of  emphasis.  What  part  of  the  experience 
situation  is  it  that  is  identical  with  consciousness? 

The  older  writers  on  psychology  were  wont  to  identify 
consciousness  with  the  sum  total  of  experience.  They  made  a 
catalogue  of  its  various  contents  —  sensations,  memories,  con- 
cepts, feelings,  and  volitions,  and  called  the  whole  conscious- 
ness. What  mental  processes  are  when  they  are  not  conscious 
they  did  not  try  to  explain,  unless  indeed  they  fell  back  upon  a 
materialistic  physiology,  or  more  recently  upon  the  vague  no- 
tion of  the  subconscious  which  is  left  undefined.  It  has  seemed, 
however,  to  some  recent  psychologists  that  consciousness  must 
be  defined  in  terms  of  some  part  of  the  psychological  situation, 
rather  than  in  terms  of  the  situation  as  a  whole. 

One  group  of  writers  would  identify  consciousness  with  the 
motor  aspect  of  the  psychological  situation.  It  has  been  pointed 
out  that  the  motor  sensations  occupy  a  peculiarly  prominent 
place  in  attention.  Some  would  even  go  so  far  as  to  reduce 
mental  activity  altogether  to  kinsesthetic  sensations  and  images. 
At  any  rate  such  were  the  only  facts  which  Wm.  James  could  in- 
trospectively  verify.  It  has  been  shown  by  the  Dewey  school l 
that  strain,  doubt,  and  readjustment  are  conditions  of  conscious- 

1  See  "James  Memorial  Volume,"  Longman's,  pp.  73  f ;  also  E.  B.  McGilvary, 
Discussion,  the  Jour.  Phil.  Psych,  and  Sci.  Meth.,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  301,  302,  and 
Dewey's  Reply,  Ibid.,  544-548. 


120  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

ness  and  that,  when  those  are  wanting,  consciousness  drops  out. 
It  has,  therefore,  seemed  that  consciousness  must  be  identified 
with  certain  organic  checks  and  releases  in  the  realization  of 
the  vital  impulse.  Stated  in  more  general  terms,  the  unique 
function  of  consciousness  is  to  control  behavior.1 

The  elements  in  the  psychological  situation,  emphasized  by 
the  motor  theory,  are  no  doubt  significant  for  the  understand- 
ing of  consciousness.  But  I  do  not  believe  they  afford  a  final 
explanation.  In  the  first  place,  the  motor  sensations  and  motor 
attitudes  are  merely  symptomatic  of  the  system  of  conative 
tendency  which  presses  for  realization.  At  most  they  are  only 
part  of  the  content  of  the  situation.  The  more  organized  the 
conative  tendency  is,  the  less  noticeable  are  the  motor  sen- 
sations, and  the  more  important  is  the  part  which  the  intel- 
lectual elements  play  in  the  organization  or  steering  of  the 
stream  of  impulse.  While  again  it  is  true  that  "consciousness 
plays  about  the  zone  of  activity"  (to  use  Bergson's  picturesque 
phrase),  or  rather  serves  to  reveal  it  and  show  its  whither,  we 
must  not  confuse  the  conditions  of  consciousness  with  the  fact 
itself.  Because  consciousness  appears  under  certain  condi- 
tions of  intensity  and  strain,  it  does  not  follow  that  conscious- 
ness itself  can  be  reduced  to  terms  of  such  intensity.  It  seems, 
on  the  contrary,  to  be  a  new  fact,  discontinuous  with  the 
antecedent  conditions. 

Another  group  of  writers  would  identify  consciousness  with 
the  cognitive  side  —  the  relational  aspect.  This  theory  is 
an  implication  of  the  idealistic  movement.  Since  the  relations 
are  taken  as  existing  within  the  content  rather  than  as  legislated 
from  without,  the  theory  harks  back  to  Hegel  and  T.  H.  Green 
rather  than  to  Kant.  In  any  case  it  is  the  relational  aspect 

1  It  is  impossible  here  to  do  justice  to  the  functional  view  of  consciousness. 
It  has  found  classic  expression  in  "  Studies  in  Logical  Theory  "  by  Dewey  and 
other  members  of  the  Chicago  School.  See  also  the  lucid  statement  in  "Prag- 
matism and  its  Critics,"  by  A.  W.  Moore;  "Definition  of  the  Psychical,"  by 
G.  H.  Mead,  University  of  Chicago,  Decennial  Publications,  First  Series, 
Vol.  Ill,  Pt.  II,  pp.  79-112;  Angell's  "Psychology."  B.  H.  Bode  identifies 
consciousness  with  the  "fringe"  considered  as  a  total  character,  "which  is  in 
the  nature  of  a  reference  or  relationship  that  faces  the  future,"  but  the  function  is 
control.  Phil  Rev.,  Vol.  23,  pp.  389-409.  While  the  functional  theory  has  made 
an  important  contribution  in  showing  the  part  played  by  conscious  processes  in 
prevision  and  adjustment,  it  does  not  define  consciousness  as  such. 


THE   CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  121 

which  is  regarded  as  giving  the  contents  meaning.  The 
relations  which  are  emphasized  by  a  contemporary  author  are 
the  logical  relations.  Consciousness  is  identified  with  the  con- 
cept of  cognitive  meaning.  To  quote  Professor  F.  J.  E.  Wood- 
bridge :  "We  are  wont  to  think  of  a  world  without  conscious- 
ness in  it  as  a  world  devoid  of  meaning.  Add  consciousness  to 
that  world  and  then  meaning  is  added,  but  nothing  else.  .  .  . 
Indeed,  it  seems  to  me,  on  analysis  of  the  situation,  that  just 
this  character  of  'awareness'  turns  out  to  be  the  manifold  and 
irresistible  meaning  connections  which  the  things  in  the  con- 
scious situation  have."1  And  again:  "The  peculiar  way  in 
which  consciousness  connects  the  objects  in  it  is,  thus,  the  way 
of  knowledge,  actual  or  possible."  2 

In  the  first  place,  the  attempt  to  define  consciousness  in  terms 
of  cognitive  meaning  or  logical  relations  seems  too  narrow  a 
definition.  There  are  other  types  of  meaning  beside  the  re- 
lational type.  There  is  the  cumulative  perceptual  disposition 
as  in  listening  to  a  melody  or  in  the  immediate  sense  of  duration 
as  conditioned  by  attention  strain.  There  are  also  the  aesthetic 
and  mystical  types  of  meaning  which,  while  they  possess  a 
certain  noetic  value,  cannot  be  regarded  as  relational  in  the 
logical  sense.  Moreover,  there  may  be  types  of  experience  of 
a  more  primitive  character  to  which  we  cannot  ascribe  the 
category  of  meaning.  Hypothetically  at  least,  we  must  assume 
a  first  interest,  a  pure  perception,  which  is  innocent  of  any 
associative  context.  In  everyday  life  we  are  conscious  of  a 
vast  number  of  sensations  which  we  do  not  attend  to  and  which, 
therefore,  have  no  meaning.  Shall  we  read  out  these  other 
types  of  meaning  or  these  mere  "awarenesses"  from  the  cate- 
gory of  consciousness,  when  we  are  conscious  of  them?  That 
seems  at  least  arbitrary. 

Is,  however,  the  main  thesis  true  that  by  adding  conscious- 
ness we  add  meaning?  And  conversely,  that  by  taking  away 

^'Studies  in  Philosophy  and  Psychology,"  1906,  pp.  160  and  161.  Cp. 
R.  B.  Perry,  "  Conceptions  and  Misconceptions  of  Consciousness,"  Psyckol. 
Rev.,  Vol.  77,  esp.  p.  296. 

2  Jour.  Phil.  Psychol.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  Vol.  II,  p.  122.  Professor  E.  B.  Mc- 
Gil vary  regards  consciousness  as  "a  unique  togetherness"  not  further  analyz- 
able.  See  "Experience  as  Pure  and  Consciousness  as  Meaning,"  the  Jour. 
Phil.  Psychol.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  Vol.  VIII,  pp.  511  ff. 


122  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

consciousness  we  take  away  meaning?  Do  we  add  the  mean- 
ing to  Homer's  Iliad  or  to  Euclid's  Geometry  or  to  our  own 
meditations  of  yesterday  by  becoming  conscious  of  them? 
Do  they  not  as  a  matter  of  fact  have  their  own  relational  con- 
text, quite  irrespective  of  our  awareness,  —  a  meaning  which  is 
socially  objective  and  which  we  must  respect?  It  would  seem, 
then,  that  the  world  of  cognitive  and  other  types  of  meaning 
into  which  the  objects  of  the  world  have  been  woven  are  as 
independent  of  consciousness  as  are  their  spatial  and  temporal 
contexts.  Consciousness  no  more  creates  the  former  type  of 
context  than  it  does  the  latter. 

It  may  be  argued,  perhaps,  that,  while  the  objective  or  social 
meaning  is  thus  independent  of  our  awareness  the  subjec- 
tive way  of  taking  or  apperceiving  these  meanings  is  identical 
with  consciousness.  This  is  nearer  the  truth  at  any  rate.  But 
even  in  taking  account  of  my  own  present  meaning  and  its 
implications,  I  must  recognize  that  it  is  not  created  by  my 
awareness,  though  this  awareness  is  a  condition  of  the  mean- 
ing's intuiting  itself.  In  the  deliberative  process,  for  example, 
the  will  discovers  its  trend,  the  implications  in  its  push  of  tend- 
ency, in  its  system  of  relations.  But  this  direction  and  com- 
plexity of  will  do  not  originate  when,  in  the  stress  of  readjust- 
ment to  a  new  situation,  we  become  conscious  of  their  implied 
meaning.  Neither  the  conative  system  nor  the  perplexing 
situation  are  created  by  consciousness.  The  awareness  is  added 
as  a  new  fact  —  a  gift  from  the  larger  universe  to  the  energetic 
situation.  It  does  not  create  the  personal,  any  more  than  the 
social  meaning.  In  either  case  it  is  a  condition  for  intuiting 
or  lighting  up  such  meaning  with  its  inherent  relationships. 

If  what  is  intended  (and  the  advocates  of  the  relational  view 
of  consciousness  shift  easily  and  without  warning  from  epis- 
temological  to  physiological  terminology)  is  not  that  conscious- 
ness is  a  relation  between  terms  figuring  somehow  within  the 
field  of  experience,  but  that  it  is  a  type  of  interaction  between 
energetic  centers,  a  type  of  energetic  continuity  between  energy 
as  nervous  structure  and  energy  as  stimulus,1  then  we  shall 

1  W.  P.  Montague  identifies  "the  field  of  consciousness  with  the  field  of  poten- 
tial energy  set  up  in  the  nerve  centers,"  the  self  being  conceived  "as  a  system  of 
interconnected  stresses."  The  Jour.  Phil.  Psychol.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  Vol.  V,  p.  210. 


THE   CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  123 

have  to  ask  how  it  figures  or  what  difference  it  makes  to  this 
interaction.  If  this  interaction  is  an  interaction  of  non-con- 
scious energies,  how  can  it  account  for  the  presence  of  con- 
sciousness? The  fact  that  it  appears  under  certain  energetic 
conditions  of  structure  and  stimulus  does  not  prove  that  it  is 
nothing  else  than  the  interaction  of  structure  and  stimulus,  if 
you  choose  to  use  relation  in  this  extraconscious  sense.  I  can- 
not distinguish'  this  miraculous  production  of  consciousness, 
out  of  non-conscious  energies,  from  the  materialistic  position, 
which  I  shall  discuss  later. 

What  would  seem  to  be  indicated,  then,  is  that  consciousness 
is  a  fact  over  and  beyond  relations,  whether  logical  relations 
or  energetic  relations  —  a  fact  which  is  somehow  bound  up  with 
the  subjective  significance  of  relations;  which  makes  energy 
aware  of  itself  as  meaningful  energy.  Just  as  space  is  not  a 
relation  or  a  system  of  relations,  but  makes  possible  the  whole 
system  of  distance  interactions,  schematized  by  our  construc- 
tive purpose  into  a  system  of  relations ;  and  as  time  is  not  a 
relation,  but  makes  possible  the  relations  of  before  and  after,  of 
past,  present,  and  future,  so  consciousness,  though  not  a  rela- 
tion, makes  possible  all  significance  of  relations  including  time 
and  space  relations,  as  well  as  logical  relations.  Just  as  in  the 
case  of  space,  it  is  not  a  question  of  a  relation  to  space,  but  a 
question  of  the  relation  of  energies  to  each  other  as  conditioned 
by  space,  so  in  the  case  of  consciousness  it  is  not  a  question  of 
the  relation  of  facts  or  energies  to  consciousness,  but  the  re- 
lation of  these  facts  or  energies  to  each  other  within  the  field 
of  consciousness.  Consciousness  is  added  to  a  certain  type  of 
energetic  relation,  where  conative  constitution  is  a  factor  of  the 
energetic  system.  Just  as  certain  substances  such  as  mother 
of  pearl  have  no  color  of  their  own,  but  are  colored  by  the 
variegated  light  which  plays  upon  them,  so  consciousness  can 
claim  no  quality  or  relation  as  its  own.  It  merely  brings  to 
light  the  variety  of  the  context.  If  we  take  consciousness  as 
such  a  neutral  light,  we  are  free  to  account  for  process  and  its 
qualities  in  terms  of  the  energetic  situations.  Tone,  color,  and 
pain,  we  then  find,  are  as  much  processes  as  weight  or  chemical 
change.  What  consciousness  adds  is  the  awareness,  which  is 
something  over  and  above  the  energetic  relations. 


124  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

If  consciousness  is  not  a  relation,  nor  a  thing,  nor  a  form  of 
energy,  shall  we  accept  the  nominalist  view  that  consciousness 
is  merely  a  name  for  the  sum  total  of  conscious  processes,  and 
that  any  attempt  to  deal  with  consciousness  as  such  is  a  mere 
hypostasis  —  a  mistaking  of  a  logical  abstraction  for  an  inde- 
pendent reality?  Is  it  like  abstracting  somniferousness  from 
somniferous  substances  and  then  treating  it  as  an  independent 
fact?  Is  it  nothing  over  and  beyond  certain  processes? 

There  is  surely  enough  truth  in  the  nominalist  view  to  make 
it  plausible.  We  have  seen  by  this  time  that  consciousness 
cannot  be  a  thing;  that,  therefore,  if  you  abstract  from  the 
processes  in  connection  with  which  consciousness  appears,  there 
is  no  thing  left.  But  is  there  not  something  suspicious  about 
this  introspective  method  and  its  easy  solution?  Does  it  not 
include  first  of  all  the  fact  which  it  was  to  separate,  and  then 
say  that  it  is  not  outside?  It  is  true  that  outside  of  conscious 
processes  introspection  furnishes  no  evidence  of  consciousness. 
But  why  should  it?  Neither  does  chemistry  furnish  any  evi- 
dence of  water  or  radium  outside  of  the  things  known  to  contain 
water  or  radium.  If  you  wanted  arguments  for  the  presence 
of  consciousness  outside  of  empirical  conscious  processes,  you 
surely  would  not  get  them  from  introspection. 

But  the  problem  has  not  been  stated  fairly  by  the  introspec- 
tionist.  The  ego  is  not  statable  merely  as  a  stream  of  conscious 
processes.  The  ego  is  an  affair  of  dispositions  or  tendencies, 
sometimes  conscious,  sometimes  not.  Consciousness  surely 
does  not  make  the  stream  of  life  continuous.  The  tendencies 
in  the  way  of  association  and  memory  are  present,  sleeping  or 
waking,  else  they  would  be  of  no  use.  Meaning  is  a  matter 
of  the  working  of  the  associative  mechanism,  and  this  is  recog- 
nized as  a  physiological  fact.  What  makes  a  fact  suggestive 
at  any  one  time,  or  what  makes  culture,  is  only  to  a  small  ex- 
tent conscious.  Even  when  adaptations  are  conscious  for  a 
while  they  may  become  habits.  What  becomes  of  conscious- 
ness when  it  is  "not  needed"?  The  question  is  not :  can  you 
observe  consciousness  outside  of  conscious  processes?  Can 
you,  like  the  old  schoolmaster,  see  some  boys  that  are  not  here  ? 
That  is  to  talk  nonsense.  The  question  is :  what  significance 
does  this  fact  of  consciousness  have  in  the  stream  of  the  ego- 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  125 

tendencies,  where  it  is  sometimes  present,  sometimes  seemingly 
absent  or  absent  so  far  as  effective  relation  to  the  processes 
goes ;  which  at  most  only  partly,  and  in  small  part,  illumines 
our  fund  of  tendencies  even  when  we  are  most  awake  ?  In 
short,  what  makes  the  difference  between  sleeping  and  waking  ? 
What  happens  when  we  become  conscious?  During  sleep  we 
are  still  there  to  other  observers.  We  are  energetic  activities 
which  can  become  conscious  in  an  instant,  by  waking  up.  In 
the  meantime  there  is  no  evidence  to  others  of  consciousness. 
A  little  change  in  blood  distribution  and  heat,  perhaps,  or  it 
may  be  only  an  external  stimulus  of  some  intensity,  furnishes 
the  condition  for  the  reappearance  of  consciousness,  and  the 
wheels  of  mind  go  round  again  in  a  significant  way.  The  world 
has  value  once  more.  With  the  increased  working  of  the  extra- 
conscious  machinery  of  association,  we  pass  thus  from  sleeping 
to  dim  drowsiness  and  to  organized  waking  meaning.  The 
conscious  moments  seem  discontinuous.  In  the  stream  of 
tendencies  which  we  call  the  ego,  there  are  beside  the  con- 
scious moments,  the  changes  which  the  purposive  ego  and  the 
spectators  must  interpolate  in  order  to  understand  the  conscious 
processes.  If  it  were  not  for  this  seeming  coming  and  going 
of  consciousness  as  contrasted  with  the  continuity  of  the  en- 
ergetic processes,  on  which  our  feeling  of  continuity  itself  de- 
pends, we  would  not  abstract  consciousness  —  but  what  does 
it  all  mean  ? 

The  materialist  is  ready  with  a  simple  and  at  first  sight  plau- 
sible answer.  He  at  least  tries  to  meet  the  problem  of  seeming 
discontinuity  in  nature.  His  answer  is  that  consciousness  is 
a  discontinuous  function  or  incidental  effect  of  the  mechanical 
processes.  He  includes  not  only  consciousness  as  such  in  this 
"  epiphenomenon,"  but  all  conscious  processes.  These,  more- 
over, are  not  energy,  but  a  picturesque  chiaroscuro  or  halo  of 
the  going-on  of  the  energetic  processes,  which  are  mechanically 
conceived.  Or,  stating  it  more  crassly,  but  not  less  metaphori- 
cally, "the  brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile." 
Or,  if  you  want  more  metaphors,  consciousness  is  to  the  physio- 
logical mechanism  what  the  headlight  is  to  the  steam  engine. 

But  while  metaphors  have  always  appealed  to  human  beings, 
they  are  not  very  satisfactory  as  explanation.  The  conception 


126  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

of  energy  for  one  thing  has  changed,  and  the  materialist,  famil- 
iar with  the  physical  speculations  of  to-day,  would  be  more 
apt  to  use  electrical  than  mechanical  metaphors.  That,  how- 
ever, would  not  essentially  alter  the  problem.  We  have  also 
seen  that  conative  processes,  whether  conscious  or  not,  must 
be  thought  of  as  energy.  They  vary  as  regards  quantity ;  they 
bear  definite  relations  to  other  forms  of  energy.  We  shall 
have  to  transfer  these,  therefore,  to  the  energetic  side  of  the 
account.  Nor  is  it  any  argument  against  these  processes  that 
they  are  different  from  other  forms  of  energy,  that  some  of  them 
at  least  are  not  extended,  that  they  cannot  be  weighed,  and 
that,  therefore,  the  category  of  mechanical  motion  is  not  ap- 
plicable. Electrical  energy  and  neural  energy  do  not  have 
extensive  mass  or  weight ;  they  do  not  come  under  mechanical 
motion ;  yet  we  have  to  recognize  them  as  forms  of  energy,  and 
as  making  definite  differences  to  other  forms.  We  need  have 
no  difficulty,  therefore,  in  recognizing  mind  stuff  as  energy. 
And  why  should  certain  processes  cease  to  be  energy  because 
illumined  by  consciousness,  any  more  than  space,  though  not 
active,  prevents  bodies  from  being  active,  though  activity  has 
a  very  different  value,  and  scope,  too,  no  doubt,  because  con- 
scious ? 

The  common  objection,  raised  against  materialism,  that  it 
violates  the  law  of  conservation  of  energy,  would  not  be  serious 
if  the  theory  met  the  facts,  as  scientific  laws  are  mere  general- 
izations from  facts.  It  would  at  most  only  show  the  limita- 
tions of  the  so  called  law.  Neither  is  it  an  answer  to  material- 
ism to  charge  it  with  moral  baseness,  as  our  ideals  are  what 
they  are  on  any  theory.  And  sometimes  sad  things  are  true. 
Our  only  concern  now  is,  does  it  explain  the  presence  of  con- 
sciousness? We  would  have  to  agree  with  materialism  that 
consciousness  as  such  is  not  an  energy,  and  hence  cannot  do 
what  energies  do,  even  though  we  must  recognize  conscious 
processes  as  energy.  Consciousness  is  not  capable  of  quantita- 
tive variation.  It  cannot  be  the  cause  of  motion  and  change. 
But  can  we  regard  it  as  an  effect  of  energy?  We  are  familiar 
now  with  all  sorts  of  transformations  of  energy.  We  know 
that  mechanical  motion  can  bring  about  electricity  or  heat,  so 
different  from  itself.  But  can  we  also  conceive  of  energetic 


THE   CONCEPT   OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  127 

process  producing  a  fact  which  is  not  energy  at  all  —  not  trans- 
formable into  energy,  to  be  sure,  because  it  is  a  different  sort 
of  fact,  but  can  it,  not  being  energy,  be  caused  by  energy? 
There  is  an  unbridgable  saltus  here  in  the  thinking  of  material- 
ism; and  none  have  been  more  candid  in  admitting  this  than 
some  of  the  materialists  themselves. 

I  do  not  see,  however,  that  the  saltus  is  any  greater  in  making 
a  non-energetic  consciousness  the  effect  of  energetic  changes 
than  in  recognizing,  as  James  and  Minot  do,  that  consciousness 
is  not  a  thing  or  energy,  and  yet  make  it  produce  energetic 
changes.  The  chasm  is  about  as  wide  one  way  as  the  other. 
That  one  form  of  energy  can  bring  about  changes  in  another 
form  of  energy  is  within  experience  and  probability,  but  not 
that  energy  should  be  converted  into  non-energy,  or  vice  versa. 

If  materialism  holds  with  Hobbes  that  consciousness  is  a 
property  of  matter  and  not  a  miracle  merely,  it  must  also  admit 
that  it  is  totally  different  in  kind  from  any  other  properties. 
It  thus  practically  admits  that  consciousness  is  an  independent 
variable  or  attribute  of  reality. 

Any  theory,  whatever  it  calls  itself,  which  strives  to  derive 
consciousness,  will  have  the  difficulty  of  materialism  —  in  losing 
the  quantitative  and  energetic  in  what  is  not  energetic.  This 
involves  an  unintelligible  saltus;  and  we  shall  always,  therefore, 
look  for  a  smoother  transition  between  consciousness,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  world  of  processes,  with  their  quantitative 
variations,  on  the  other.  This  is  furnished  in  the  theory  of 
consciousness  as  a  constant  in  the  universe,  though  depending 
upon  certain  conditions  for  its  manifestation,  as  electricity  is 
now  regarded  as  an  original  fact  (by  some  the  most  original), 
though  dependent  upon  certain  conditions.  This  brings  it 
into  the  realm  of  the  familiar. 

Materialism  has  at  least  the  advantage  of  simplicity,  but 
parallelism  is  as  cumbrous  as  it  is  unintelligible.  To  remedy 
the  fancied  injury  to  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  it 
duplicates  physiological  and  psychological  processes  and  leaves 
them  suspended  in  mid-air,  without  either  series  making  any 
difference  to  the  other.  To  speak  of  psychological  contents, 
where  there  is  no  evidence,  is  surely  doubtful  psychology,  and, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  has  no  epistemological  justification.  To 


128  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

wind  up  with  idealistic  monism  is  as  roundabout  as  it  is  a 
questionable  way  of  arriving  at  such  a  do'ctrine.  To  make 
psychological  processes  parallel  to  mechanical  rearrangements 
can  only  convey  sense  to  a  man  who  does  not  think  about  it. 
Even  if  we  mean  by  parallel  merely  a  one  to  one  correspondence, 
we  have  no  right  to  assume  a  priori  that  such  obtains.  And 
it  would  be  the  wildest  sort  of  imagination  to  hope  to  establish 
it  by  empirical  proof.  And,  lastly,  to  give  the  world  of  physical 
objects  any  status  at  all,  since  it  can  make  no  difference  to  the 
world  of  psychic  processes,  seems  impossible.  If  this  furnishes 
credulous  people  a  short  cut  to  idealism,  let  them  enjoy  it. 

We  have  already  seen  that  psychological  processes  must  be 
regarded  as  energy,  bearing  statable  relations  to  other  forms 
of  energy.  The  physiological  body  is  a  net  for  catching  several 
types  of  energy,  mechanical,  chemical,  electrical,  nervous,  and 
conative.  There  is  no  reason  for  drawing  any  line  of  holy  and 
unholy  between  these,  at  least  for  scientific  purposes,  and  to- 
gether they  furnish  the  individual  organism  with  its  race  and 
individual  characteristics,  its  continuities,  and  its  specific  activ- 
ities. To  this  stream  of  processes  consciousness  is  somehow 
added.  But  it  is  certainly  not  parallel  to  it. 

There  remains  the  interaction  theory,  with  its  insistence  upon 
the  causal  efficacy  of  consciousness.  With  the  best  of  motives, 
this  theory  is  as  confused  epistemologically  as  the  preceding. 
There  can  be  no  sense  in  speaking  of  the  consciousness  of  pain 
or  blue  as  interacting  with  the  physiological  processes  of  pain 
or  blue.  The  pain  processes  and  the  blue  processes,  no  doubt, 
vary  with  other  energies,  and  in  turn  act  upon  them,  but  this 
is  not  the  case  with  the  awareness  of  them.  By  stating  con- 
sciousness as  an  independent  variable,  an  ultimate,  non-ener- 
getic fact,  we  shall  have  the  simplicity  of  materialism  without 
the  contradiction  of  trying  to  convert  energy  into  non-energy. 
We  shall  fulfill  the  intent  of  the  materialist  by  taking  con- 
sciousness out  of  the  energetic  category,  while  we  acknowledge 
the  energetic  claims  of  the  conative  processes.  We  shall  save 
the  duplication  of  parallelism  and  its  absurd  separation  of 
processes  into  two  independent  causal  series,  but  we  shall  ac- 
complish the  intent  of  parallelism  by  showing  the  independent 
and  non-derivable  character  of  consciousness  as  such.  We  shall 


THE   CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  129 

finally  accomplish  the  intent  of  the  interaction  theory  by  show- 
ing the  energetic  character  of  the  conative  processes,  their 
efficacious  relation  to  the  other  energies  of  nature,  while  we 
get  rid  of  the  absurdity  of  having  a  non-energetic  consciousness 
interact  with  an  energetic  world. 

It  is  time  we  were  getting  over  the  false  prejudice  that  the 
body  is  something  mean  and  base  and  that  activity  is  being 
degraded  by  being  called  physiological.  The  Greeks  did  not 
look  upon  the  body  as  anything  degraded.  On  the  contrary, 
it  was  to  them  the  embodiment  of  beauty  and  meaning.  It 
furnished  the  inspiration  for  Greek  sculpture.  It  is  fraught 
with  the  potentialities  of  life.  Plato  alone,  in  some  of  his 
pessimistic  moods,  makes  the  body  a  prison  house.  Aristotle 
is  here  the  truer  Greek.  For  the  evolutionist,  the  body  is  the 
bearer  of  the  tendencies,  the  biological  heritage,  of  the  race; 
and  for  the  psychologist  it  must  furnish  continuity  and  meaning 
to  life  through  habit  and  memory.  Mean  is  what  mean  does, 
and  good  is  what  good  does,  and  if  the  body  is  bound  up  with 
all  our  badness,  it  also  is  bound  up  with  all  our  goodness  and 
appreciation  of  beauty ;  it  makes  us  one  with  the  world  of  en- 
ergies, at  the  same  time  that  with  its  tendencies  it  differentiates 
those  energies  for  us.  All  it  needs  is  consciousness  to  convert 
this  structure,  when  it  has  reached  a  certain  complexity,  into 
actual  value.  And  it  does  not,  like  Prakriti,  vanish  at  the 
glance  of  Purusha.  But  it  furnishes  the  activity  still,  though 
meaningful  activity.  And  so  we  fail  to  give  it  credit.  The 
body  is  the  organ  and  the  music,  too,  as  consciousness  is  added 
to  the  complex  bodily  energies.  The  ceaseless,  untiring  player 
is  nature,  which  in  us  becomes  purpose  and  ideals.  It  is  a  mis- 
take to  identify  the  body  merely  with  the  physical  and  chemical 
forms  of  energy.  It  includes  nervous  and  will  energy  as  well. 
There  is  ample  chance  for  a  hierarchy  of  energies  within  the 
body  —  the  bearer  not  only  of  the  past  and  present,  but  preg- 
nant also  with  the  future. 

Consciousness  and  Mind  Stuff 

This  theory  of  consciousness  removes  the  greatest  obstacle 
to  the  proper  metaphysical  understanding  of  mental  processes, 
viz.  the  dogma  that  their  existence  depends  upon  our  con- 


130  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

sciousness  of  them.  There  are  two  conceptions  of  the  exist- 
ence of  mental  processes  when  we  are  not  conscious  of  them 
which  may  be  regarded  as  typical.  One  is  Augustine's  view 
that  ideas  exist  in  a  mysterious  storehouse  of  the  mind,  thence 
to  be  dragged  forth  under  certain  circumstances.  The  other 
view  is  that  mental  facts  exist  only  when  we  are  aware  of  them. 
This  has  been  expressed  recently  by  William  James:  "The 
per  dpi  in  these  originals  of  experience  is  the  esse;  the  curtain 
is  the  picture."  *  It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  history  that  nothing 
has  played  into  the  hands  of  the  materialist  as  this  doctrine  of 
subjective  idealism,  that  esse  est  per  dpi,  when  applied  to  our 
mental  states.  If  we  assume  that  our  mental  processes  cannot 
exist  unless  we  are  aware  of  them,  then  we  must  assume  like- 
wise that  when  we  are  not  thus  conscious,  mental  facts  are 
converted  into  material  processes;  and  thus  we  have  an  in- 
finite number  of  miracles  —  magic  transformations  from  the 
material  into  the  mental  and  vice  versa,  unless  indeed  we  assume 
with  materialism  that  the  halo  of  mental  facts  is  extinguished 
altogether  without  any  energetic  equivalent  —  to  be  created 
afresh  under  certain  conditions,  as  Heraclitus'  sun  is  extinguished 
and  born  from  the  sea.  How  such  a  somersault  theory  should 
have  been  tolerated  as  scientific  it  is  difficult  to  see.  It  cer- 
tainly indicates  a  tremendous  appetite  for  the  miraculous. 

Since  subjective  idealism  assumes  that  mental  processes 
exist  only  in  a  field  of  consciousness,  it  follows  that  mental 
processes  must  be  witnessed  in  order  not  to  pass  into  nothingness. 
Moreover,  since  subjective  idealism  likewise  assumes  that  physi- 
cal qualities  exist  only  as  mental  states,  nature  too  must  be 
witnessed  in  order  to  exist.  It  is  true  that  such  witnessing  need 
not  be  by  you  or  me  or  any  particular  finite  self,  but  by  a  more 
inclusive  witness.  Even  so  it  would  seem  to  follow  that  my 
individual  reality  and  yours  disappears  when  there  is  no  in- 
dividual witnessing,  though  held  perhaps,  in  the  meantime,  as 
a  configuration  of  content  in  the  consciousness  of  some  other 
witness.  What  constitutes  the  real  significance  of  subjective 
idealism  is  that  processes  and  relations  in  order  to  exist  must 
be  witnessed.  Historically  it  has  never  meant  solipsism,  as 
there  has  always  been  the  assumption,  tacit  or  explicit,  of 

i  "A  Pluralistic  Universe,"  p.  378. 


THE   CONCEPT   OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  131 

other  witnesses  beside  the  individual  moment.  It  was  taken 
for  granted  even  by  Berkeley  that  the  universe  did  not  vanish, 
when  he  as  an  individual  happened  to  nod.  In  fact  its  char- 
acter need  not  be  altered  so  long  as  there  is  any  witness. 

The  attempt  to  define  the  witnessing  has  given  rise  to  a  diver- 
sity of  opinion.  Some  have  argued  that  since  reality  does  not 
seem  to  be  dependent  upon  your  or  my  witnessing,  there  must 
be  an  absolute  witness,  which  includes  all  finite  contents  of 
experience  in  one  comprehensive  and  eternal  field  of  conscious- 
ness. Our  fleeting  moments  are  but  fragmentary  flashes  of 
this  complete  self -consciousness.  And  whatever  reality  we 
have,  we  therefore  eternally  hold  within,  and  by  virtue  of,  the 
absolute.  Others,  again,  have  insisted  that  plural  finite  wit- 
nesses, sharing  the  same  contents,  are  sufficient.  The  reservoir 
may  be  a  larger  cosmic  field  such  as  Fechner's  earth-soul,  or 
a  finite  supernatural  mind  which  envelops  us.  Such  plural 
witnesses  it  is  felt  are  sufficient  to  guarantee  the  reality  and 
meaning  of  our  evanescent  contexts  of  experience. 

In  either  form,  the  theory  of  subjective  idealism  is  a  dogma 
unsupported  by  evidence.  It  rests  on  the  fallacious  use  of 
the  method  of  agreement  which  merely  emphasizes  that  mental 
states  exist  when  we  do  take  account  of  them.  This  no  one 
would  dispute.  That  they  also  make  a  difference  when  we  do 
not  take  account  of  them,  —  a  difference  to  the  significance 
and  control  of  the  content  when  later  attended  to  or  to  the 
sequence  of  events  in  consciousness,  —  is  now  a  commonplace 
of  psychology.  It  is  a  gratuitous  assumption  to  suppose  that 
mental  processes  are  created  and  vanish  with  the  appearance 
and  vanishing  of  the  consciousness  of  them.  Memories  are 
certainly  not  created  when  we  become  aware  of  them.  Asso- 
ciation has  its  own  conative  context  which  is  not  a  context  of 
atoms  and  molecules.  Tendencies,  which  we  cannot  recall, 
make  a  difference  to  the  meaning  and  value  of  facts  which  we 
do  recall.  The  shifting  of  the  attention,  which  makes  a  mar- 
ginal fact  focal,  does  not  make  the  fact.  In  the  perception  of 
things,  and  in  the  filmy  texture  of  the  imagination,  we  have  the 
reinstatement  of  the  original  sensory  elements,  which  must, 
therefore,  have  existed  in  the  meantime.  In  short,  we  have 
come  to  accept  the  fact  now  that  mind  is  a  much  broader  term 


132  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

than  consciousness;  and  that,  while  consciousness  comes  and 
goes,  our  conative  attitudes,  our  cognitive  and  aesthetic  contexts 
remain  fairly  permanent.  It  is  easier,  at  least,  to  think  that 
the  limits  of  mind  are  not  the  limits  of  attention  or  awareness ; 
that  will  attitudes  and  ideas  do  not  cease  when  we  attend  to 
them  —  to  be  magically  recreated  upon  occasion ;  that  in  the 
meantime  they  make  a  real  difference  to  the  total  attention 
situation ;  that  they  are  simply  brought  into  the  narrow  field 
of  attention  by  the  machinery  of  association,  and  the  deter- 
minate interest  at  the  time ;  that  like  other  energies  they  obey 
definite  laws  of  spreading  and  recurrence ;  but  that  they  be- 
come conscious  facts  only  under  certain  conditions  of  intensity 
and  organization.  Their  value  for  the  cognitive  moment 
arises  when  they  become  conscious,  but  not  their  own  existence 
or  meaning.  Augustine,  with  his  storehouse  of  ideas,  is  nearer 
the  truth  than  subjective  idealism  with  its  perpetual  miracles, 
for  he  at  least  does  not  establish  leaps  which  nature  does  not 
know. 

What  I  have  tried  to  make  clear  is  that  consciousness  and 
mind  are  conceptually  separable  facts,  that  consciousness  is  a 
fact  superadded  upon  the  contents  of  mind  and  their  relations, 
under  certain  energy  conditions  of  complexity  and  intensity; 
and  that  this  consciousness  when  so  added,  does  not  make  the 
will  attitudes  or  perceptual  contents  nor  does  it  add  the  re- 
lations of  meaning  to  the  contents.  We  no  more  make  our  own 
mind  than  the  mind  of  Homer  in  becoming  conscious  of  it. 

This  question  is  quite  distinct  from  the  question  as  to  the 
relation  between  mental  processes  and  physical  processes.  Hav- 
ing abstracted  from  consciousness,  we  can  conceive  our  mental 
processes  as  energies  linked  with  other  types  of  energy  in  a 
definite  way.  If  our  conative  attitudes  seem  to  make  a  dif- 
ference to  physiological  states  and  in  turn  the  latter  to  the 
former,  what  is  there,  aside  from  our  own  bigotry,  to  prevent 
the  applying  of  our  categories  of  causality  and  energy,  however 
difficult  may  be  the  exact  measurement  of  the  complex  differ- 
ences? All  that  causality  means,  in  our  ignorance,  is  that  one 
set  of  processes  make  predictable  differences  to  another  set. 
And  if  electricity  can  make  definite  differences  to  extended  and 
ponderable  processes  without  being  extended  and  ponderable, 


THE   CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  133 

why  should  not  mind  produce  differences  in  what  we  call  physical 
energies,  though  the  differences  thus  produced  may  not  be 
identical  in  kind  with  their  antecedents?  Such  differences  at 
any  rate  the  facts  seem  to  indicate  in  the  invariable  sequences 
which  we  observe  between  mental  and  physical  processes. 
This  theory  judges  the  existence  of  mental  energies,  as  it  does 
radioactive,  from  the  behavior  of  the  processes  with  which  we 
deal.  It  holds  that  the  conative  system  of  tendency,  bound  up 
somehow  for  the  time  being  with  the  cerebral  context  as  its 
instrument  or  organ,  is  the  immediate  condition  of  consciousness. 
It  is  this  which  must  be  brought  into  play  either  in  solving  its 
own  ideal  problems  or  as  the  result  of  the  shock  brought  by  other 
energies,  intra-  or  extra-organic.  In  any  case,  as  the  fact  of  con- 
sciousness is  present  throughout  the  whole  field  of  introspective 
experience,  we  do  well  to  take  it  for  granted  in  dealing  with  the 
psychology  of  the  self,  with  its  continuities  and  discontinuities. 
The  nature  of  consciousness  is  a  metaphysical  rather  than  a  psy- 
chological problem. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  (Continued) 

IF  consciousness  makes  no  causal  difference  to  our  energetic 
processes,  if  the  complexity  of  the  associative  organization,  as 
well  as  the  nature  of  its  constituent  processes,  the  sensations 
and  ideas,  depend  upon  development  and  structure,  what 
practical  difference  can  consciousness  make  to  our  world? 
In  the  first  place,  we  have  seen  that  this  is  really  a  new  prob- 
lem. What  has  been  dealt  with  in  the  past,  from  Protagoras, 
Augustine,  and  Descartes  down,  has  been  rather  the  contrast 
between  one  set  of  processes,  the  conative  processes,  especially 
as  involved  in  knowledge,  and  the  processes  which  seem  more 
external  to  the  conscious  ego.  But  if  you  take  away  from 
the  side  of  consciousness  all  that  is  energetic,  is  it  not  an  abstrac- 
tion? Yes,  it  is  an  abstraction  in  the  sense  that  space  is  an 
abstraction,  but  like  space  it  must  be  treated  as  a  fact  of  its 
own  kind.  We  have  become  acquainted  with  other  realities, 
which,  while  they  are  not  energy  and  therefore  can  make  no 
causal  difference  to  energetic  centers,  yet  do  make  a  definable 
difference.  We  must  rid  ourselves  of  the  prejudice  that  ener- 
getic or  causal  difference  is  the  only  difference  which  facts 
within  reality  can  make  to  each  other.  There  are  differences 
which  do  not  involve  quantitative  equivalence,  but  which  are 
equally  real.  Space  bears  no  causal  relation  to  the  energies 
in  space,  and  yet  it  makes  a  decided  difference  to  these  energies 
that  they  must  interact  in  space.  Their  actions  do  vary  in  a 
certain  statable  way  with  the  distance.  Time  I  have  identified 
elsewhere  with  the  chance  element  of  the  universe.  Time 
makes  the  difference  of  fluency  or  change  at  all.  To  what  degree 
and  of  what  kind  the  fluency  shall  be,  depends  upon  the  struc- 
tural character  of  reality.  Hence,  in  trying  to  describe  the 
constancies  or  anticipations,  which  are  based  upon  structure, 

134 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  135 

even  in  reducing  the  flow  of  process  in  general  to  a  conven- 
tional statement  in  terms  of  some  one  process,  we  may 
come  to  overlook  the  presupposition  which  makes  process 
at  all  possible.  The  space  character  and  the  time  character 
each  makes  only  one  effective  difference  and  throws  upon  the 
energetic  structure  the  responsibility  for  the  diversity  of  facts 
and  changes. 

The  Pragmatic  Difference  of  Consciousness 

So  with  consciousness :  it  makes  only  one  difference  to  reality. 
Under  certain  energetic  conditions,  it  makes  the  difference  of 
awareness.  You  might  say  that  it  is  physiological  and  cona- 
tive  processes  which  make  consciousness  apparent,  rather  than 
the  opposite.  For  nature  must  first  perfect  her  arrangements 
before  consciousness  can  make  any  apparent  difference.  And 
this  apparent  difference  is  the  difference  of  awareness.  What 
the  awareness  means,  what  character  and  value  it  has,  depends 
upon  the  energetic  relations,  always  including  the  conative 
system  of  tendencies  as  part  of  the  situation.  The  processes 
color  consciousness,  not  consciousness  the  processes.  Con- 
sciousness itself  is  colorless.  A  certain  kind  of  energetic  dif- 
ferentiation and  a  certain  degree  of  energetic  intensity  become 
sensations  of  color  or  tone,  etc.,  when  we  are  aware  of  them; 
certain  constructive  or  destructive  changes  become  pleasure  or 
pain.  A  certain  kind  of  associative  or  cumulative  structure 
becomes  imaginative  perspective,  etc. 

The  usefulness  of  such  a  consciousness  does  not  account 
for  its  existence,  but  we  can  see  how  consciousness,  being 
real,  can  figure  as  a  survival  condition  and  how  the  type  of 
structure,  which  makes  awareness  possible,  should  be  advanta- 
geous, A  more  efficient  type  of  adjustment  is  made  possible  by 
working  in  the  light  rather  than  in  the  dark.  The  structures 
favor  consciousness  and  in  turn  consciousness  favors  the  struc- 
tures. Adaptation  as  such  is  not  a  matter  of  consciousness, 
as  complicated  adaptation  does  go  on,  both  in  human  and  infra- 
human  life,  without  consciousness.  But,  with  consciousness, 
automatic  adaptation  becomes  desire  and  purpose.  Imagina- 
tion and  thought  are  added  to  reflex  and  instinctive  reactions, 
with  greater  complexity  of  structure.  It  "is  the  light  which 


136  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world/'  but  whether 
it  is  color  or  tone,  emotion  or  thinking,  pleasure  or  pain,  depends 
not  upon  it,  but  upon  the  energetic  conditions.  As  space  is 
the  precondition  of  externality  and  time  of  change,  so  conscious- 
ness is  the  precondition  of  awareness. 

What  metaphysical  difference  does  this  awareness  make  to 
our  world?  In  what  way  is  reality  practically  enriched  or 
altered  because  of  consciousness?  We  can  conceive  the  ener- 
getic situations  as  the  same  though  consciousness  is  subtracted. 
We  have  also  seen  that  the  contexts  of  meaning,  past  and  pres- 
ent, logical  and  aesthetic,  can  exist  without  consciousness. 
They  must  be  acknowledged  by  the  conscious  moment.  They 
are  not  created  by  our  awareness.  What  is  added  then  to  the 
conative  situation  by  consciousness?  And  what  disappears 
with  the  subtracting  of  consciousness?  It  seems  clear  that 
without  consciousness,  we  could  not  have  value  in  the  sense  of 
subjective  significance.  There  could  not  be  the  sense  of  satis- 
faction in  the  working  out  of  the  conative  tendency.  In  a 
non-conscious  world  we  can  conceive  of  a  progress  from  a  lesser 
to  a  greater  perfection  in  Spinoza's  sense  of  greater  organiza- 
tion, more  complete  independence  from  external  accidents, 
greater  coherence  of  parts,  until  a  self-sufficient,  self-dependent 
whole  is  reached.  But  Spinoza  is  quite  right  that  in  such  an 
impersonal  constitution  there  could  be  no  value  —  no  sense 
of  goodness  and  beauty.  In  an  intellectual  type  of  impersonal 
world,  we  would  have  a  logic  machine  grinding  out  certain  re- 
sults. In  a  material  type  of  world  there  could  still  be  selective 
action,  a  differential  taking  account  of  stimuli,  as  the  magnet 
takes  account  of  the  loadstone,  as  the  chemical  elements  take 
account  of  each  other  in  the  compound,  and  respond  by  new 
creative  syntheses.  But  the  intuition  of  movement,  the  rela- 
tions of  cognition  and  appreciation,  would  be  lacking,  for  these 
imply,  beside  the  energy  situations,  the  attribute  of  conscious- 
ness. The  category  of  work,  energetic  interlocking,  could  be 
applied  but  not  the  category  of  realization.  Conative  tendency 
could  be  there,  and  this  could  go  off  in  the  presence  of  certain 
stimuli,  as  is  the  case  with  the  physiological  reflexes.  Add 
consciousness  and  instinct  becomes  impulse,  conative  tendency 
becomes  interest,  with  its  tone  of  agreeableness  or  disagreeable- 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  137 

ness  according  to  its  success  or  failure.  As  the  ghosts  of  Hades 
crowd  to  taste  the  blood  of  the  sacrifices,  so  do  the  pale  memo- 
ries and  tendencies  crowd  to  get  the  vitalizing  touch  of  a  living 
interest.  Thus  is  the  halo  of  value  added  to  what  otherwise 
would  be  a  mechanical  and  blind  process.  The  specific  color- 
ing of  the  concrete  values  is  still  due  to  the  processes  —  their 
direction  and  complexity.  What  consciousness  makes  possible 
is  value  at  all.  Homer's  Iliad  and  Euclid's  Geometry  have 
meaning  connections,  but  value  they  have  only  as  they  figure 
in  the  subjective  moment,  as  taken  account  of  by  a  living 
interest. 

The  relation  of  interest  is  a  dual  relation.  It  requires  two 
terms  for  its  statement,  however  immediate  the  situation  may 
be,  and  whether  we  take  account  of  their  existence  or  not.  It 
is  consciousness  which  is  simple,  which  knows  no  terms.  Inter- 
est requires  a  conative  constitution,  on  the  one  hand,  and  it 
implies  the  shock  of  a  stimulus,  on  the  other  hand.  It  is  futile 
to  try  to  state  the  situation  of  interest  in  the  absence  of  the 
conative  tendency.  It  would  be  Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left 
out. 

The  logical  relation  of  knower  and  known  is  but  one  type  of 
the  conscious  situation  which  we  call  interest.  There  is  the 
relation  of  appreciation  as  well  as  of  cognition.  Within  this  field 
of  interest,  subject  and  object  are  locked  in  one  selective  reac- 
tion ;  they  are  functions  of  one  context  of  experience,  the  sub- 
ject indicating  the  organized  conative  system,  the  referent, 
while  the  object  indicates  the  content  selected  or  emphasized, 
the  relatum  —  the  whole  situation  being  lit  up,  but  not  created 
by  consciousness. 

Consciousness  thus  makes  the  difference  between  automatic 
and  significant  activity.  Without  consciousness  we  could 
have  the  ether  waves  and  the  retinal  changes  and  the  complex 
cortical  changes  with  complex  adjustments,  as  in  somnambu- 
lism. Certain  destructive  organic  changes  might  be  going  on, 
but  they  could  only  be  corrected,  perhaps,  by  the  extinction 
of  the  particular  individual  and  the  building  up  of  race  instincts, 
which  is  a  costly  and  clumsy  method  at  best.  With  conscious- 
ness, an  infinitely  greater  degree  of  individual  adjustment 
becomes  possible  because  of  the  awareness  of  the  changes. 


138  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

The  cumulative  changes,  made  possible  by  a  nervous  system, 
become  cumulative  meaning.  Physiological  structures  become 
pictures,  and  energetic  interactions  become  significant  rela- 
tions. Thus  past  sensations  and  thinking  become  available 
for  present  emergencies,  making  it  possible  for  prospective  con- 
ative  tendency  to  anticipate  the  future  in  a  definite  way,  and 
thus  enabling  us  to  act  at  a  distance  in  space  and  in  time, 
instead  of  being  dependent  upon  the  present  stimulus.  Habit, 
association,  and  memory  are  still  physiological  processes  and 
obey  mechanical  laws.  It  is  their  significance  which  has  been 
altered. 

Consciousness  thus  makes  the  difference  to  the  stream  of 
instinctive  tendencies,  that  it  can  see  its  own  flow,  can  become 
aware  of  its  own  direction,  and  can  feel  the  value  of  its  fulfill- 
ment or  thwarting ;  and,  as  it  does  so,  can  control  its  separate 
impulses  accordingly.  It  is  not  a  link  in  the  chain  of  causality, 
interacting  with  the  events,  physical  or  mental,  but  by  its 
presence  in  the  conative  stream,  the  distinguishing  of  physical 
and  mental  becomes  possible.  The  whole  flow  of  change  is 
transformed  from  mechanical  causality  to  teleological  causality. 
It  is  more  like  a  medium,  in  which  the  events  travel,  than  like 
a  cause.  It  is  not  an  epiphenomenon  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a 
by-product  of  mechanical  changes.  Rather,  it  is  a  fact  over 
and  beyond  the  mechanical  changes,  which,  under  certain 
conditions,  makes  them  more  than  mechanical.  It  makes  the 
trend  of  conative  tendency  an  ego. 

We  have  seen  that  it  is  peculiarly  in  value  situations  that 
the  presence  of  consciousness  is  significant.  These,  indeed, 
could  not  exist  without  consciousness.  But  we  must  not  sup- 
pose on  that  account  that  value  is  created  by  consciousness. 
The  latter  is  but  one  factor  in  the  situation,  however  indis- 
pensable. In  order  to  have  value,  there  must  be  the  fulfillment 
of  organized  tendency  in  terms  of  its  object.  This  presupposes 
not  only  conative  tendency,  but  the  whole  physiological  machin- 
ery of  associative  organization.  It  has  been  pointed  out  by 
James,  Dewey,  Schiller,  and  others  that  values  are  creative 
additions  to  our  world.  But  it  is  not  our  awareness  that  creates 
them.  Little  is  known  of  the  conditions  of  creativeness  whether 
as  regards  appreciation  or  thought.  We  know  that  a  certain 


THE    CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  139 

set  or  attitude  is  necessary  on  the  part  of  the  will.  Then  we 
must  experiment  within  our  material  whether  artistic  or  logical. 
And  if  we  work  and  meditate,  something  may  happen.  A  new 
insight  may  come.  But  ideal  creative  conception,  like  biological 
conception,  takes  place  in  the  dark.  It  is  a  gift  from  the 
creative  energy  of  the  universe.  The  light  of  consciousness 
but  makes  it  appear  to  the  individual  and  society.  While 
consciousness,  however,  does  not  create  value,  it  is  equally 
clear  that  value  could  not  exist  without  it.  Value  implies 
appreciation,  the  sense  of  realization,  and  this  must  be  a  con- 
scious process. 

While  we  have  found  the  contribution  of  consciousness  pecul- 
iarly significant  in  the  case  of  value,  we  must  not  assume 
that  value  situations  are  the  only  ones  in  which  consciousness 
exists  as  an  ingredient.  We  would  all  agree  that  wherever 
there  is  attention  there  is  consciousness.  Now  the  selective 
character  of  attention,  its  contribution  of  clearness,1  depends 
upon  organization.  In  the  case  of  primary  and  active  atten- 
tion, the  affective  quality  is  apt  to  be  strong.  There  is  a  vivid 
consciousness  of  success  and  failure.  But  when  attention 
becomes  routine,  the  value  aspect  tends  to  disappear,  and  the 
process  approximates  the  character  of  habit.  We  must  also 
remember  that  consciousness  is  by  no  means  limited  to  the 
comparatively  small  group  of  processes  which  can  figure  in 
attention  at  any  one  time.  We  are  aware  of  vast  masses  of 
sensation  from  without  and  within,  of  impulses  and  associa- 
tions, which  we  do  not  attend  to,  but  which  are  nevertheless 
part  of  the  field  of  consciousness.  The  processes  to  which  we 
do  not  attend  lack  clearness  and  possibly  differ  in  other  ways 
such  as  intensity  and  duration.  For  the  most  part,  they  are 
indifferent,  i.e.  they  possess  no  value,  though  sometimes  they 
may  be  distractions  or  possess  a  negative  value.  This  goes 
to  show,  therefore,  that  such  characteristics  as  clearness  and 
value  are  due  to  the  converging  and  organization  of  tendencies. 
They  are  not  accounted  for  by  merely  calling  them  facts  of 
consciousness,  though  consciousness  is  a  generic  condition  of 
their  existence. 

1  In  connection  with  attention  see  Titchener,  "A  Textbook  of  Psychology," 
1913,  esp.  pp.  276-284. 


140  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

Consciousness  is  like  Aristotle's  form  of  the  body,1  in  so  far 
as  it  is  inert  as  to  the  carrying  on  of  bodily  activity.  It  does 
not  figure  as  a  cause  in  the  process.  It  does  not  make  the 
engine  go.  Nor  is  it  the  potential  energy  actualized,  as  Aristotle 
supposed,  since  it  is  not  statable  as  energy  at  all.  It  is  a  new 
fact  added.  It  makes  a  difference,  however,  both  as  to  the 
value  and  the  control  of  processes.  It  makes  possible  prevision 
instead  of  mere  cumulative  habit,  as  well  as  illumines  imme- 
diate value.  Significant  activity,  in  other  words,  requires  two 
attributes  or  independent  variables  to  describe  it  —  energy  and 
consciousness.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  our  ideals  are 
mere  coruscations  or  halos,  byplays  to  the  going  on  of  energy. 
They  are  energies,  tendencies,  aware  of  their  direction  and  with 
a  complex  structural  machinery  in  the  way  of  association  and 
habit  at  their  disposal.  That  the  organism  is  relighted,  even 
as  a  candle  in  the  night,  can  be  easily  understood,  if  we  attend 
to  the  energetic  conditions  on  the  one  hand,  and  consciousness 
on  the  other. 

The  pathological  phenomena  fall  as  easily  under  the  account 
of  structure  and  awareness  as  the  normal.  Such  phenomena  as 
lapses  of  memory,  alternating  selves,  multiple  selves,  etc., 
can  easily  be  met  on  this  theory  as  due  to  physiological  dis- 
organization, not  to  disorganization  of  consciousness.  How- 
ever dissociated  or  split  the  associative  systems  of  tendencies 
may  be,  consciousness  remains  identical. 

Since  consciousness  as  awareness  is  a  condition  of  all  value, 
it  cannot  decide  as  between  values ;  it  cannot,  as  consciousness, 
legislate  between  higher  and  lower  values  or  pick  the  permanent 
from  the  transient.  They  are  alike  conscious ;  and,  therefore, 
their  different  claims  must  be  decided  on  the  ground  of  organi- 
zation, not  on  the  ground  of  awareness.  It  makes  the  realiza- 
tion of  tendency  significant,  both  immediately  and  in  perspec- 
tive, past  and  future;  but  it  has  nothing  to  say  as  to  what 
tendencies  should  prevail;  which  are  valid  or  invalid  values. 
Since  objects  are  pleasing  and  beautiful  in  relation  to  our 

1  In  the  Aristotelian  spirit,  Santayana  has  tried  to  show  how  consciousness, 
though  inert,  furnishes  the  meaning  and  value  of  process.  But  Santayana  fails  to 
distinguish  between  consciousness  and  psychological  processes.  The  latter  are 
not  inert.  See  "  Reason  in  Common  Sense,"  Gh.  IX. 


THE    CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  141 

tendencies,  and  since  our  whole  universe  of  tendencies  may 
be  low  or  abnormal,  and  yet  be  consistent  within  itself,  con- 
sistent art  or  poetry  or  life,  but  low,  we  need  another  dimension 
besides  energetic  tendency  and  consciousness  to  decide  what 
values  or  ideals  shall  prevail,  which  is  the  seeming  and  which 
is  the  real  direction,  if  the  universe  is  to  have  ultimate  signifi- 
cance. It  may  be  the  wrong  meaning,  the  wrong  scale  of  values, 
the  wrong  pleasures  and  pains,  a  low  universe  of  appreciation. 
If  so,  they  must  be  eliminated  and  new  universes  of  value  be 
made  to  prevail.  We  must,  therefore,  assume  besides  energy 
and  consciousness  a  formal  attribute.  The  universe  must  be 
so  constituted  as  to  have  such  an  objective  form  as  to  condition 
survival  of  individual  streams  of  tendency,  as  well  as  social 
conventions,  in  order  that  new  and  higher  universes  may  pre- 
vail in  the  long  run.  Consciousness,  as  awareness,  does  not 
explain  any  particular  value  or  meaning,  nor  does  it  determine 
the  validity  of  values  and  meanings.  It  is  a  general  precondi- 
tion without  which  there  could  not  be  value  at  all. 

The  Distribution  of  Consciousness 

We  must  say  a  word  about  the  distribution  of  consciousness 
or  its  place  in  the  cosmos  as  a  whole.  The  distribution  of 
consciousness,  so  far  as  psychology  is  concerned,  is  a  compara- 
tively simple  matter.  It  is  a  question  of  evidence;  and  we 
can  get  introspective  evidence  of  consciousness  only  when  we 
have  associative  memory.  This  already  presupposes  complex 
organic  conditions.  Whether  memory  can  be  present  below 
the  grade  where  we  find  a  nervous  system  is  a  matter  of  evi- 
dence, too,  and  should  not  be  settled  a  priori. 

Within  the  range  of  our  own  experience,  we  find  many  degrees 
of  attention.  These  degrees  depend  upon  associative  organi- 
zation, or  the  complexity  of  the  conative  system,  consciousness 
being  present  and  undivided  in  all  the  stages.  The  question 
arises :  Can  there  be  awareness  below  the  level  of  associative 
memory  and  meaning?  We  can  at  least  find  transition  links 
toward  such  a  state.  We  are  sometimes  aware  of  having  been 
dimly  conscious,  as  in  going  to  sleep  or  in  just  waking,  without 
being  able  to  recall  any  ideas.  This  dimmer  awareness  is  here 
continuous  with  ideational  awareness,  and  so  comes  to  mean 


142  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

something  as  a  background.  The  epileptic  and  the  somnambu- 
list respond  to  stimuli  as  though  they  had  sensory  consciousness, 
even  when  they  furnish  no  evidence  in  the  way  of  memory. 
The  first  conscious  states  of  the  infant  must  be  such  a  dim 
awareness  without  meaning  or  "  knowledge  about. "  The  dog, 
and  still  more,  the  pigeon  and  the  frog,  seem  to  react  on  various 
sense  stimuli  as  though  they  had  sensations,  even  after  their 
hemispheres  have  been  removed,  though  the  evidence  shows 
that  there  is  no  reference  to  past  experience,  and  therefore,  no 
meaning.  There  may  also  be  an  immediate  consciousness  of 
agreeable  and  disagreeable  in  connection  with  conative  realiza- 
tion and  its  cumulative  disposition  below  the  level  of  associative 
memory.  At  any  rate,  the  same  fundamental  type  of  organic 
reactions,  expansive  and  contractive,  are  present.  Where 
such  awareness  stops  it  would  be  impossible  to  say,  and  for 
purposes  of  continuity,  we  may  find  it  convenient  to  assume 
it  clear  down.  Such  awareness,  where  the  conditions  differ 
radically  from  our  own  must  be  problematic,  a  mere  x  as  far 
as  knowledge  is  concerned,  virtually  split  off  from  practical 
purposes.  It  is  consistent,  however,  with  the  fact  which  we 
have  tried  to  bring  out  above,  that  the  meaning  of  the  aware- 
ness, what  sort  of  meaning,  and  whether  it  means  anything  at 
all,  is  due  to  energetic  structure. 

This  is  very  different  from  supposing  that  there  are  feelings 
outside  of  consciousness.  That  is  mere  nonsense.  Feelings 
imply  consciousness.  The  question  is  whether  consciousness 
as  an  ontological  presupposition  exists  below  even  the  dim- 
mest or  most  confused  processes  of  experience  as  we  know  it. 
There  is  no  easy  line  psychologically ;  and  logically  it  is  simpler 
to  assume  the  presupposition  of  consciousness  than  to  derive 
it  from  non-conscious  processes.  It  is  easier,  for  epistemological 
purposes,  to  suppose  that  consciousness  is  a  constant,  rather 
than  that  it  butts  in;  that  it  shines  upon  the  just  and  the 
unjust,  the  simple  and  the  complex,  and  in  all  kinds  of  weather, 
and  that  the  difference  in  its  effectiveness  is  due,  not  to  it,  but 
to  the  energetic  conditions  in  the  universe.  For  meaning  struc- 
tures differ  from  non-meaning  structures  not  only  in  conscious- 
ness, but  in  organization.  And  only  in  the  latter  respect  do 
meaning  structures  differ  from  other  meaning  structures. 


THE   CONCEPT   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  143 

Consciousness  may  be  universal,  as  time  and  space  are  uni- 
versal in  the  world  of  energetic  relations,  though  we  can  only 
know  it  or  have  direct  evidence  of  it  where  it  makes  a  differ- 
ence. We  do  not  know  it  as  split  off,  any  more  than  we  know 
anything  else  which  is  isolated.  The  question  what  conscious- 
ness is,  if  there  is  nothing  but  consciousness,  is  as  sensible  as 
the  question  what  difference  space  makes  if  there  is  nothing 
but  space.  Attributes  of  reality  are  "  not  divided  by  a  hatchet." 
It  is  not  necessary  to  regard  them  as  more  split  off  in  nature 
than  we  find  them.  Consciousness  does  seem  to  be  split  off 
in  our  own  personal  history,  so  far  as  making  any  difference 
under  certain  organic  conditions  is  concerned,  as  in  dreamless 
sleep.  It  may  be  the  same  in  connection  with  the  simpler 
processes  of  nature.  At  any  rate,  to  suppose  consciousness 
existent,  even  when  the  conditions  for  its  effectiveness  are 
wanting,  waiting,  as  it  were,  for  the  conditions  to  appear,  or 
to  be  made  effective  through  the  conditions,  steers  clear  of 
the  question  of  origin,  and  so  greatly  simplifies  our  metaphysi- 
cal problem.  Its  effectiveness,  we  have  seen,  consists  merely 
in  contributing  awareness.  I  can  see  only  two  ways  of  account- 
ing for  the  presence  of  consciousness.  It  must  either  be  a 
constant  —  as  I  have  tried  to  show  above  —  or  it  must  be 
created  outright,  when  we  have  evidence  of  it.  Materialism 
amounts  to  the  latter  view.  Moreover,  this  miracle  would 
have  to  occur  not  only  once  and  for  all,  but  would  have  to  be 
repeated  every  time  and  everywhere  that  consciousness  is 
known  to  appear.  Such  a  heaping  up  of  miracles  is  hardly 
consistent  with  the  modern  scientific  spirit. 

It  behooves  us  to  remember  at  any  rate  that  our  blindness 
and  dogmatism  is  no  measure  of  the  distribution  of  conscious- 
ness. To  some  of  the  Cartesians,  animals  below  man  were 
mere  unconscious  automata,  and  they  could  proceed  with  good 
conscience  in  their  vivisectional  experiments.  Later,  the  higher 
vertebrates  were  conceded  mental  reactions  similar  to  those  of 
man.  For  the  most  part,  the  tendency  has  been  to  ignore 
types  of  mind  different  from  those  which  we  find  in  the  higher 
vertebrates.  Comparative  psychology,  however,  has  shown 
that  the  higher  insects  show  intelligent  behavior  which,  while 
different,  is  not  inferior  in  complexity  to  that  of  the  vertebrates. 


144  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

The  instinctive  intuition  of  the  bee  shows  possibilities,  in  the 
way  of  social  organization  and  material  manipulation,  which 
parallel  the  higher  achievements  of  abstract  intelligence.  The 
architecture  of  the  bee  from  the  point  of  view  of  economy  and 
adaptedness  would  in  the  series  of  intellectual  development 
presuppose  the  highest  tools  of  mathematical  science.  As 
opposed  to  the  dogmatic  theory  that  intelligent  behavior 
stops  with  the  disappearance  of  the  nervous  system  in  the  animal 
series,  we  have  the  recent  investigations  by  Jennings  and 
others  which  show  that  the  behavior  of  microorganisms  indi- 
cates cumulative  learning  by  experience  in  the  way  of  habit 
formations.  In  the  case  of  plant  life,  we  find  a  series  of  increas- 
ing complexity  of  behavior  which  is  more  and  more  attracting 
our  admiration.  While  in  our  own  life  the  functions  of  nutri- 
tion, respiration,  and  propagation  are  conscious  only  in  unusual 
states  (though  they  contribute  importantly  to  the  total  ccenaes- 
thesis  of  well-being  and  value),  perhaps  "no  such  eclipse  occurs 
in  plants,  and  their  lower  consciousness  may  therefore  be  all 
the  more  lively.  With  nothing  to  do  but  to  eat  and  drink  the 
light  and  air  with  their  leaves,  to  let  their  cells  proliferate,  to 
feel  their  rootlets  draw  the  sap,  is  it  conceivable  that  they  should 
not  consciously  suffer  if  water,  light,  and  air  are  suddenly 
withdrawn?  or  that  when  the  flowering  and  fertilization  which 
are  the  culmination  of  their  life  take  place,  they  should  not 
feel  their  own  existence  more  intensely  and  enjoy  something 
like  what  we  call  pleasure  in  ourselves?"  1  So  Fechner,  one 
of  the  greatest  of  scientists,  thought;  and  even  though  his 
account  may  so  far  have  to  be  credited  to  the  poetry  of  science, 
his  intuition,  based  as  it  is  on  scientific  analogy,  is  at  least 
more  reasonable  than  materialistic  dogmatism.  Certain  it  is 
that  in  plant  behavior  we  find  selection  and  adaptation  which 
resemble  and  even  rival  operations  which  we  know  to  be 
conscious  in  the  higher  animals.  Perhaps  with  new  tools 
and  scientific  patience,  the  future  may  prove  Fechner's  vision 
to  be  something  more  than  analogy.  With  Fechner,  we  have 
to  consider  the  possibility  that,  just  as  functions,  which  exist 
in  isolation  in  inorganic  nature,  such  as  sound  and  light,  are 
synthesized  into  the  sensations  of  an  individual  organism,  so 

1  James'  account  of  Fechner,  "A  Pluralistic  Universe,"  pp.  166  and  167. 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  145 

there  may  be  a  more  comprehensive  synthesis  where  our  one- 
sided perceptions  and  valuations  are  taken  up  together  with 
those  of  other  structures  which  are  comparatively  strange  to 
us,  into  a  more  adequate  ensemble.  For  Fechner's  scientific 
mind,  the  earth-soul  and  the  hierarchy  of  cosmic  organization 
furnish  the  possibility  of  such  higher  systems.  For  simpler, 
but  equally  devout  souls,  practical  and  emotional  needs  have 
opened  the  curtain  to  a  Presence  with  an  infinite  capacity  for 
sympathy  and  companionship,  for  whom  all  our  hairs  are 
counted,  and  without  whose  tender  solicitude  no  sparrow  falls 
to  the  ground.  At  any  rate,  we  must  confront  the  possibility 
that  consciousness  and  mind  are  not  limited  to  our  skulls,  or 
to  skulls  like  ours. 

Some  Other  Problems 

The  chief  difficulty,  as  regards  the  presence  of  consciousness, 
has  come  from  regarding  consciousness  as  private  or  individual. 
If  we  regard  consciousness  as  one  and  undivided,  one  character, 
the  same  everywhere,  as  space  is  the  same,  we  shall  avoid  this 
stumbling  block.  We  do  not  suppose  that  there  must  be  as 
many  real  spaces  as  there  are  bodies.  Real  space  has  only 
one  effective  character,  binding  upon  all  alike  so  far  as  they  are 
individual  energies.  It  makes  the  difference  of  distance.  So 
consciousness  does  not  differ  from  moment  to  moment  or  from 
one  conscious  being  to  another.  So  far  as  there  is  privacy  or 
opaqueness  it  lies  in  individual  organization,  not  in  conscious- 
ness. If  there  is  one  conscious  being  in  the  universe,  there- 
fore, consciousness  is  as  real  as  though  there  were  billions,  since 
consciousness  is  not  a  matter  of  quantity.  And,  if  we  find  it 
difficult  to  think  of  consciousness  as  split  off,  we  must  remem- 
ber it  only  seems  split  off  from  the  individual  point  of  view. 
In  the  whole  it  is  really  present  as  a  constant  property.  In 
the  total  universe,  moreover,  even  if  we  find  it  difficult  to  im- 
agine consciousness  in  the  abstract,  we  can  imagine  some  indi- 
vidual as  possessing  the  structure  for  significant  awareness  at 
any  one  time,  even  on  the  theory  of  chances.  And,  if  this 
does  not  satisfy  us  in  the  changes  of  cosmic  weather,  we  can 
have  recourse  to  the  guardian  of  Israel  who  "  shall  neither 
slumber  nor  sleep."  The  constancy  of  energetic  conditions 


146  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

for  such  a  being  we  can  now  conceive  as  possible.  As  the 
simplest  organic  being,  the  unicellular  organism,  has  an  indef- 
inite life,  so  we  may  imagine  the  highest  or  perfectly  organized 
being  as  having  the  conditions  for  permanent  life  and  conscious- 
ness in  himself.  It  is  we  half -men  that  struggle.  Such  a 
being  we  shall  have  reason,  no  doubt,  to  assume,  on  ethical 
and  religious  grounds.  If  so,  it  will  greatly  aid  our  imagina- 
tion, even  if  it  does  not  increase  the  coerciveness  of  our  logic. 
The  need  for  a  permanent  consciousness  might  even  count  as 
one  of  the  arguments  for  such  a  being,  if  unconvinced  of  the 
possibility  of  such  permanency  in  any  other  way.  Better  such 
an  assumption  than  the  heaping  up  of  meaningless  miracles. 

And  why  should  we  assume  that  consciousness  is  subjective 
in  the  sense  of  private?  Whether  facts  are  subjective  or  not 
must  be  determined  on  other  grounds  than  their  being  con- 
scious. My  being  conscious  of  facts  does  not  prove  them  sub- 
jective. My  fellow  man,  music,  color,  etc.,  do  not  become 
subjective  because  I  am  conscious  of  them.  In  that  case  all 
facts  would  become  subjective.  The  test  of  subjectivity  or 
objectivity  is  whether  they  can  be  shared  by  several  observers. 
Those  are  subjective  processes  which  can  be  facts  for  one 
observer  only.  Those  are  objective  which  can  be  shared  by 
several  observers.  Thus  pain  is  subjective,  in  so  far  as  I  can 
not  put  another  observer  in  a  position  to  have  the  same  process ; 
while  color  processes  must  be  objective,  because  another  ob- 
server can  share  them  as  much  as  he  can  share  any  object.  I 
may  for  certain  purposes,  mechanical  purposes  for  example, 
ignore  the  color  properties  and  select  the  geometrical  properties, 
but  that  is  another  story,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  objective 
reality.  The  survival  value  of  treating  such  properties  as 
color  and  sound  as  objective  would  of  itself  be  a  strong  argu- 
ment for  their  objective  existence. 

The  matter  of  subjectivity  after  all  is  largely  a  matter  of 
degree.  The  closer  we  come  to  similarity  of  conditions,  both 
of  situation  and  individual  structure,  the  nearer  we  come  to  a 
sharing  not  only  of  logical  meanings,  but  of  feelings  and  emo- 
tions. We  come  to  have  common  sympathies.  It  is  customary 
to  speak  of  images  as  private,  as  contrasted  with  perceptions, 
and  yet,  as  Le  Bon  and  others  have  pointed  out,  images,  espe- 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  147 

daily  visual  images,  furnish  the  most  effective  social  means  of 
persuasion  and  common  action.  They  furnish  the  bond  of  the 
mob.  If  imagery  were  as  private  as  the  psychologists  try  to 
tell  us,  poetry  would  be  well-nigh  impossible. 

Psychology  as  an  introspective  science,  moreover,  has  no 
monopoly  of  consciousness.  In  fact,  it  does  not  have  occasion 
to  deal  with  consciousness  in  the  abstract.  What  it  studies 
is  the  laws  and  tendencies  of  conative  processes,  processes  in 
part,  or  part  of  the  time,  conscious,  i.e.  issuing  into  conscious- 
ness under  certain  conditions  or  presupposed  as  mental  con- 
stitution by  the  conscious  moment. 

This  theory  furnishes  a  decided  advantage  from  the  point  of 
view  of  accounting  for  perception  and  knowledge.  By  doing 
away  with  the  superstition  of  the  privacy  of  consciousness  and 
showing  its  identical  character  everywhere,  it  reinstates  the 
world  of  energetic  continuities  which  has  proved  so  fruitful 
a  conception  in  science.  This  theory  recognizes  privacy,  but  it 
is  a  relative  and  explicable  privacy.  It  is  due,  not  to  conscious- 
ness, but  to  individual  variation  of  structure,  to  unique  ensem- 
bles of  tendencies,  which  consciousness  serves  merely  to  reveal. 
If  such  uniqueness  is  a  drawback  to  communication,  it  is  the 
raw  material  of  progress.  Moreover,  it  bears  close  relations 
to  the  race  life  all  the  while.  It  is  a  deviation  merely  from  the 
common  race  stock,  the  continuity  with  which  must  make  its 
originality  significant.  It  is  not  a  charmed  circle.  This 
conception  of  consciousness  does  not  indeed  solve  the  problem 
of  knowledge.  But,  inasmuch  as  for  this  theory  consciousness 
becomes  merely  a  universal  postulate,  so  far  as  the  knowing 
function  is  concerned,  therefore  consciousness  no  longer  com- 
plicates the  problem,  which  now  becomes  one  of  energetic 
processes  and  their  relations.  This  problem  is  a  twofold  one. 
It  must  explain  on  the  one  hand  how  one  energy  can  know 
another,  whether  differing  in  complexity  or  in  kind,  and  on 
the  other  hand  how  our  energetic  purposes  can  know  realities 
which  are  not  energy,  including  consciousness  itself.  This 
problem  has  been  dealt  with  elsewhere.1 

This    conception    of    consciousness    greatly    simplifies    the 

'See  "Truth  and  Reality,"  Macmillan,  1911,  Chapter  XIV,  "Pragmatic 
Realism." 


148  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

problem  of  energy.  It  destroys  the  old  conceptual  cleavage 
between  mind  and  body,  or  physical  energy  on  the  one  hand 
and  psychological  processes  on  the  other,  by  making  conscious- 
ness a  fact  independent  of  energy.  Nature  knows  no  cleavage 
of  energetic  interactions.  Why  should  we,  by  our  concepts, 
put  asunder  what  nature  has  joined  together?  The  scientific 
theorist  may  now  go  ahead  and  simplify  as  he  pleases,  irrespec- 
tive of  consciousness.  All  we  ask  is  that  his  conceptual  model 
shall  meet  the  energetic  facts. 

Is  consciousness  diaphanous?  If  this  means  that  conscious- 
ness makes  no  difference  at  all,  that  processes  are  the  same  when 
they  are  conscious  as  when  they  are  not  conscious,  that  we  are 
the  same  asleep  as  awake,  then  the  question  is  absurd.  But 
if  the  statement  that  consciousness  is  diaphanous  merely 
means  to  emphasize  that  consciousness  does  not  make  or  alter 
the  energies  of  things;  that  no  properties  of  things  are  con- 
stituted by  consciousness;  that  the  only  difference  it  makes 
is  awareness,  which  is  not  a  causal  relation,  —  if  this  is  what 
is  meant,  it  agrees  with  this  theory.  On  the  other  hand,  while 
consciousness  does  not  make  properties  or  structures,  it  is  a 
general  precondition  of  our  interest  in  them  and  their  value 
for  us. 

The  question  has  been  raised  by  a  certain  school  of  idealists 
as  to  whether  the  universe  would  vanish  if  there  were  no  con- 
sciousness. Why  should  it?  I  do  not  vanish  as  a  set  of  ener- 
gies when  I  am  asleep,  not  even  when  no  one  takes  account  of 
me.  I  have  no  evidence  of  consciousness  —  and  evidence  would 
mean  memory,  and  so  awareness  of  the  meaning  type  —  during 
seven  hours  of  last  night,  and  no  one  perceived  me,  and  yet  I 
can  go  on  with  my  plans  of  yesterday.  Moreover,  there  was 
change  and  development  in  the  meantime,  of  which  the  waking 
moment  must  take  account.  The  world  looks  different  from 
what  it  did  at  the  time  of  my  going  to  sleep.  Problems  have 
taken  on  a  new  meaning.  So  nature,  too,  could  have  rhythmic 
pulses.  Yet  in  its  waking  moments,  it  would  know  it  was 
real  in  its  sleep,  and  could  furnish  evidence  in  the  way  of  changes 
which  must  be  interpolated  between  its  waking  moments,  and 
which  do  not  happen  when  they  are  taken  account  of,  but  must 
be  taken  account  of  because  they  have  happened.  Of  course, 


THE   CONCEPT   OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  149 

if  the  whole  world  were  asleep,  the  sleep  of  Endymion  would 
have  no  significance,  though  real  nevertheless  if  conditioning 
his  waking  up. 

Every  theory  of  reality  must  meet  certain  practical  problems. 
And  the  question  probably  has  suggested  itself  before  now : 
What  becomes  of  immortality  on  this  theory?  To  this  I  will 
answer  that  the  problem  of  immortality  is  the  same  on  this 
as  on  any  other  theory.  It  can  be  neither  proved  nor  dis- 
proved by  theories.  To  say  that  everything  is  experience,  irre- 
spective of  evidence,  does  not  help  the  problem  of  immortality 
one  whit.  The  facts  of  transmutation  and  the  demand  for 
individual  continuity  would  still  remain.  As  individual  im- 
mortality means,  not  the  simplicity  of  the  soul  nor  the  immor- 
tality of  mere  consciousness,  but  the  carrying  over,  perhaps, 
of  memories,  or  at  least  of  tendencies,  the  problem  becomes  an 
energetic  one.  Individual  immortality  would  depend  upon 
the  continuity  of  energetic  conditions,  not  upon  consciousness. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  show  that  we  constantly  possess  aware- 
ness during  the  sleeping  and  waking  of  this  life  even.  More- 
over, energetic  continuity  need  not  mean  the  gross  continuity 
of  the  body.  Race  continuity  involves  only  one  specific  form 
of  energy,  and  a  small  portion  at  that.  So  it  may  be  with 
individual  continuity.  If  we  can  carry  tendency  over,  tendency 
to  think  and  feel  and  act,  to  enjoy  beauty  and  feel  sympathy 
with  our  world,  we  ought  to  be  satisfied.  This  is  the  net  result 
of  it  all.  This  view,  moreover,  would  fit  in  with  the  church 
doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  so  far  as  energetic 
continuity  is  concerned.  It  would  not  include  the  clothes 
or  shoes  or  Gabriel's  trumpet.  But  these,  after  all,  are  not  an 
essential  part  of  the  conception.  The  life  of  a  disembodied 
consciousness  would  be  a  pretty  ghost-like  affair.  The  world 
of  energy  must  furnish  the  principle  of  individuation. 

Since  all  that  is  necessary  to  bring  back  personality  is  the 
presence  of  certain  energetic  conditions,  with  the  light  of  con- 
sciousness thrown  on  them,  the  problem  of  immortality  be- 
comes at  least  simplified.  The  fact  that  we  have  not  been 
able  to  trace  such  energetic  continuity  of  personality  as  yet,  is 
no  argument.  We  were  slow  in  tracing  biological  continuity 
experimentally.  We  have  only  within  comparatively  recent 


150  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

times  found  out  something  of  the  character  of  electricity  and 
radium  and  the  Brownian  movement.  The  energy  underlying 
personal  continuity  may  be  much  subtler  than  these,  and  the 
favorable  occasion  for  taking  account  of  it,  in  its  new  state, 
may  be  much  more  difficult  to  find.  Perhaps  the  spontaneous 
trance,  as  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Piper,  may  furnish  such  an  oppor- 
tunity. This  remains  to  be  established.  At  any  rate,  we 
have  no  right  to  assume  that  a  certain  gross  energetic  condition 
to  which  we  are  accustomed,  is  the  only  condition  under  which 
consciousness  can  appear.  We  have  discovered  a  multiplicity 
of  conditions  under  which  electricity  can  appear.  To  be 
sure,  these  are  only  analogies,  but  I  have  shown  at  least  that 
this  view  is  not  hostile  to  the  conception  of  permanent  person- 
ality. What  really  is  the  place  of  man  and  God  in  the  universe 
must  be  established  by  the  evidence  of  human  experience  and 
not  by  a  priori  reasoning.  And  they  must  have  a  place  in  the 
universe  if  human  experience  in  its  progressive  evolution  con- 
tinues to  require  them.  The  realities  of  the  ego,  of  God  and 
immortality,  remain  what  they  are,  on  any  theory.  If  the 
evidence  proves  that  they  must  be,  then  they  can  be. 

Conclusion.  —  This  view  of  consciousness  is  self-consistent ; 
it  is  economic  in  that  it  assumes  consciousness  as  a  constant 
and  thus  avoids  the  problem  of  origin;  it  is  also  economic  in 
avoiding  the  duplication  of  structure  involved  in  separating 
physiological  and  conscious  processes.  It  meets  all  the  require- 
ments of  biological  evolution,  and  of  normal  and  abnormal 
psychology.  It  accounts  for  the  intermittent  character  of 
awareness.  It  meets  the  practical  demands  as  well  as  any  other 
theory.  It  does  not  prove  them,  for  this  must  be  done  by 
evidence,  but  it  makes  them  possible. 


CHAPTER  IX 
KNOWING  MINDS 


IN  trying  to  know  the  self,  we  must  recognize  in  the  first 
place  that  our  concern  must  be  with  the  finite  self  and  its  proc- 
esses. We  cannot  even  conjecture  a  mind  different  from  ours. 
Such  a  mind  must  turn  out  in  the  last  analysis  to  be  an  abstrac- 
tion from  our  own  experience.  The  idealistic  absolute  is 
merely  our  own  ideal  of  a  completed  knowledge,  not  a  different 
mind. 

In  the  second  place,  the  method  pursued  must  be  naturalistic. 
We  must  strive  to  know  a  self  as  we  try  to  define  a  chemical 
element  —  through  its  conduct,  not  through  a  priori  considera- 
tions. We  would  not  say  that  the  self  is  its  behavior,  any 
more  thanjwe  would  say  that  a  chemical  element  is  its  behavior. 
It  is  not  only  the  way  it  now  behaves,  but  the  way  it  can  behave 
in  all  possible  situations.  The  self  is  what  it  must  be  taken 
as  in  its  behavior,  by  itself  and  by  others,  in  various  contexts, 
physical  and  social,  especially  the  latter.  It  is  not  something 
over  and  above  the  properties  as  known  in  situations;  the 
essence  appears  completely,  given  the  proper  conditions.  There 
is  no  substance  except  energy.  The  self  can  be  as  truly  known 
as  a  chemical  element  in  the  tests  of  various  situations.  It  has 
its  breaking  point  in  the  stresses  and  strains  of  experience  as 
surely  as  cast  iron;  its  melting  point  as  surely  as  gold;  its 
freezing  point  as  surely  as  water ;  its  explosion  point  as  surely 
as  dynamite ;  its  point  of  confluence  with  other  selves  as  surely 
as  wine  mixes  with  water;  it  separates  from  other  selves  as 
surely  as  oil  refuses  to  mix  with  alcohol.  Habits,  motives, 
characters  are  but  expectancies  of  varying  complexity,  which 
we  can  have  as  regards  the  self  with  reference  to  definite  situa- 

351 


152  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

tions.  Of  these  situations,  the  social  situations  are  by  far  the 
most  important  —  the  only  ones  in  fact  which  would  make 
self-consciousness  in  the  first  instance  possible.  But,  secondarily 
at  least,  physical  situations,  too,  count.  In  them  we  learn  our 
strength  and  courage  and  many  other  properties.  The  self 
in  any  case  is  what  we  must  take  it  as  being  in  conduct.  It 
has  spontaneity,  if  we  must  acknowledge  spontaneity.  It  is 
a  mechanism,  just  in  so  far  as  we  can  treat  it  that  way.  We 
must  learn  to  take  the  mind  as  known,  and  not  as  the  epiphe- 
nomenon  of  material  processes  on  the  one  hand  or  of  a  tran- 
scendent substance  on  the  other.  We  must  start  with  facts, 
not  with  dogmas.  Its  properties  indeed  are  different  from  those 
of  material  things.  It  has  no  gravitational  mass.  But  neither 
has  electricity.  Its  properties  differ  in  different  situations. 
But  so  do  those  of  any  physical  thing.  The  visual  properties 
of  the  diamond  don't  cut  glass.  While  difficult  sometimes 
to  calculate,  owing  to  lack  of  organization  or  owing  to  complexity 
of  motives,  still  its  conduct  is  largely  predictable.  Human 
institutions  of  credit  and  confidence  are  built  on  such  pre- 
dictability. Taken  in  the  average  such  predictability  becomes 
well-nigh  absolute.  Where  the  self  differs  radically  from  a 
physical  thing  is  in  the  fact  that  consciousness  is  superadded 
to  its  activities  and  so  gives  them  meaning  and  value  for  the 
self.  But  while  this  adds  subjective  significance,  it  does  not 
prevent  us  from  taking  account  of  the  properties  of  the  self, 
past  and  present.  And  the  property  to  have  mercy  is  just 
as  much  of  a  property  as  the  solidity  of  steel. 

Like  radium,  mind  is  not  as  yet  known  to  exist  in  an  isolated 
state.  We  know  mind,  for  certain  at  least,  only  in  connection 
with  physiological  processes,  though  we  may  hope  for  more 
corroborative  evidence  of  the  existence  of  mind  after  death. 
But  while  mind  exists  in  connection  with  physiological  processes, 
we  know  it  nevertheless  as  pure ;  and  we  know  it  better  than 
we  know  anything  else.  When  we  take  account  of  our  own 
meaning  or  try  to  understand  another  living  mind  or  try  to  get 
the  significance  of  a  poem,  in  either  case,  nerves  don't  get  mixed 
up  with  ideas,  any  more  than  the  letters  on  the  page  get  con- 
fused with  the  meaning  we  try  to  decipher.  We  know  mind 
as  it  is.  Whether  we  know  its  existence  apart  from  certain 


KNOWING  MINDS  153 

physiological  conditions  or  not,  itself  we  know  as  clear  and  dis- 
tinct a  fact  of  its  own  kind,  with  its  definite  internal  as  well 
as  external  relations. 

II 

This  is  as  true  in  knowing  other  minds  as  in  knowing  our 
own.  The  knowledge  of  other  selves  has  been  confused  by 
two  theories.  One  is  the  theory  of  analogy,  viz.  that  we  know 
other  selves  only  by  analogical  inference,  based  upon  the  simi- 
larity of  other  bodies,  and  their  behavior,  with  our  own,  while 
it  is  only  our  own  mind  that  we  know  immediately.  This 
theory  confuses  the  problem  of  causality  with  the  problem  of 
knowledge.  It  is  true  that  our  minds  must  make  differences 
to  our  own  bodies  and  their  physical  environment  before  their 
behavior  can  be  overt  to  others  and  vice  versa.  But  it  is  not 
true  ordinarily  that  in  knowing  we  argue  back  from  bodily 
structure  to  mind.  Man  had  composed  great  epics,  laws,  and 
religions,  built  all  the  fundamental  social  institutions,  before 
he  knew  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a  nervous  system.  And 
even  now  the  knowledge  of  the  relation  of  mind  and  body  is 
decidedly  problematic  and  not  to  be  compared  with  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  mind's  own  relations,  as  we  know  it  in  logic,  psy- 
chology, and  ethics.  To  be  sure  we  sometimes  start  from  struc- 
ture in  dealing  with  lower  animal  minds,  but  this  is  just  the 
beginning  of  hypothesis,  not  real  inference  as  to  the  mind's 
own  nature.  This  must  be  understood  through  conduct  —  its 
intelligence  and  docility,  quite  independent  of  the  presence  of 
a  nervous  system.  It  certainly  seems  absurd  to  suppose  that 
men  should  first  study  the  connection  of  mental  states  and 
bodily  expression  in  themselves  and  then  read  a  mind  back  of 
the  expression  and  structure  of  others,  —  and  this  before  they 
know  anything  about  the  connection  of  mind  and  body  in  them- 
selves or  have  even  distinguished  mind  from  body.  It  seems 
pretty  clear  that  they  start  the  other  way ;  that  they  first  learn 
to  recognize  purposive  conduct  in  others,  before  they  become 
aware  of  the  relation  of  mind  and  conduct  in  themselves.  They 
learn  to  associate  emotions  and  attitudes  with  expression  in 
others  before  they  are  conscious  of  expression  in  themselves. 

The  other  theory  is  the  mystical  theory.     It  argues  for  the 


154  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

immediacy  of  the  knowledge  of  other  minds  without  reference 
to  interaction  or  behavior.  We  immediately  acknowledge  other 
selves  and  that  is  all.  Such  acknowledgement  is  based  upon 
no  inference,  implicit  or  explicit.  It  permits  of  no  genetic 
analysis.  Now  this  theory  is  certainly  nearer  true  than  the 
previous,  from  which  it  is  a  reaction.  The  knowledge  of 
other  selves  may  be  regarded  as  immediate  as  that  of  our  own. 
We  know  ourselves,  as  we  know  others,  through  the  situations 
upon  which  we  react.  But  this  is  quite  different  from  holding 
that  w6  have  a  mystic  knowledge  of  ourselves  in  the  abstract 
or  of  others  in  the  abstract.  In  the  abstract  our  significance 
equals  zero.  The  knowledge  of  other  selves  is  neither  a  matter 
of  analogical  inference  nor  of  mystical  appreciation  but  the 
homely  way  of  reading  conduct.  And  as  social  adjustment  is  a 
centrifugal  process,  it  is  natural  that  we  should  have  formulated 
our  own  significance  in  terms  of  social  situations  —  of  social 
approval  and  disapproval,  before  we  began  to  formulate  the 
relation  of  social  situations  to  our  own  ideals.  The  learning 
process  is  at  first  a  purely  objective  process.  A  boy  friend  of 
three  was  confronted  with  a  small  misdemeanor.  He  recognized 
by  the  situation  that  it  was  a  wrongness.  He  steadily  main- 
tained that  he  had  not  done  it.  His  father  sternly  and  sadly 
said, ' '  Bobby,  are  you  telling  me  a  lie  ?  "  He  was  finally  brought 
round  to  the  right  point  of  view  with  his  mother's  assistance 
and  owned  his  act,  with  the  solemn  impression  that  the  serious 
thing  about  it  was  telling  a  lie.  The  next  day  he  astonished  his 
parents  by  adding  to  an  answer  which  he  made  "and  it  is  not  a 
lie."  Through  one  tragic  social  context  he  had  learned  the 
significance  not  only  of  a  word  but  of  a  social  relation.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  he  did  not  compare  the  parent's  bodily  ex- 
pression with  his  own. 

In  the  progress  of  experience,  language  as  an  artificial  ex- 
pression of  mind,  with  its  complex  network  of  relations,  largely 
takes  the  place  of  concrete  situations  for  knowing  minds. 
And  our  knowing  our  own  mind,  past  and  present,  as  well  as 
knowing  other  minds,  becomes  the  immediate  recognition  of  the 
meaning  of  the  language  situations,  until  in  the  technical  dis- 
ciplines concrete  imagery  very  largely  drops  out  in  our  reading 
of  meanings.  The  matrix  of  language,  with  its  artificial  equiva- 


KNOWING  MINDS  155 

lents  for  things  and  relations,  becomes  the  social  correlate  of 
our  communication  and  understanding  of  minds,  not  brain 
cells  and  association  fibers.  And  logic,  geometry,  and  ethics  as 
sciences  of  social  mind  relations  reached  a  high  perfection  as 
sciences  before  neural  physiology  was  born.  In  social  com- 
munication, what  we  are  immediately  concerned  with  is  words, 
conduct  —  not  brain  states.  In  talking  with  an  individual, 
as  in  reading  a  book,  we  are  concerned  not  with  causes  and 
effects  —  the  producing  of  the  spoken  or  written  symbols 
and  their  reaching  our,  or  the  other  party's,  sensorium.  We 
are  concerned  with  the  interpretation  of  the  symbols.  The 
words  are  immediately  associated  with  certain  meanings; 
and  our  attention  is  fixed  on  the  meanings,  not  on  the  instru- 
ments. As  the  ivy  clings  to  the  material  framework  which 
supports  it,  so  do  our  meanings  in  every  joint  cling  to  lan- 
guage, only  the  meanings  make  their  own  framework  as  the 
nautilus  builds  its  chambers. 

While  it  is  true  that  in  understanding  other  selves  we  are 
dealing  with  the  social  matrix  of  language  and  meanings,  still 
this  does  not  prove  that  brain  processes,  nerves,  vocal  chords, 
air  waves  and  ears  or  eyes  do  not  mediate  causally  between 
selves  in  communicating  with  each  other.  The  teleological 
explanation  and  articulate  acknowledgment  of  meaning  by 
meaning  would  not  be  possible,  in  our  sense  world  at  least,  if 
the  communicating  minds  were  not  part  of  the  causal  nexus 
of  the  intervening  world. 

Ill 

A  great  deal  of  mystery  has  been  thrown  about  the  dual 
nature  of  the  self  by  traditional  psychological  theory.  It  is 
supposed  that  there  is  an  absolute  and  invariable  relation 
between  the  knower  and  the  known  or,  to  use  James's  phrase- 
ology, the  7  and  the  me.  This  is  true  not  only  of  the  old 
rationalistic  psychology  with  its  metaphysical  soul,  but  it 
is  true  of  recent  treatments.  Says  Wundt :  "Every  ex- 
perience contains  two  inseparable  factors  —  objects  of  ex- 
perience and  the  experiencing  subject."  l  And  Ebbinghaus : 
"  Wherever  thoughts  and  sensations  are  experienced,  this  sub- 

1  Wundt,  "  Definition  der  Psychologie,"  jPhilosophische  Studien,  1895. 


156  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

jective  bearer  to  which  they  adhere,  also  becomes  directly 
conscious  in  them  and  through  them,  in  the  same  way  as  they 
themselves."1  And  even  James:  "It  is  obvious  that  if 
things  are  to  be  thought  in  relation,  they  must  be  thought  to- 
gether or  in  one  something,  be  that  something  ego,  psychosis, 
state  of  consciousness,  or  whatever  you  please." 2  This 
something  to  be  sure  is  a  "a  spiritual  something."  Still  its 
externality  to  the  empirical  situation  is  implied.  When  I 
try  to  make  clear  to  myself  what  this  simple  bearer  is  which 
is  constant  in  all  the  states  and  logically  distinct  from  them, 
it  seems  to  be  nothing  else  than  the  abstract  fact  of  conscious- 
ness itself.  This  certainly  is  constant  and  simple  and  accom- 
panies all  our  conscious  states.  It  is  also  separable  from  them, 
as  mental  processes  need  not  be  always  conscious. 

If  what  is  meant  is  that  all  experience  involves  the  sub- 
ject-object relation  or  is  representative,  certainly  some  doubt 
may  be  thrown  from  the  side  of  the  facts.  When  we  think 
we  of  course  always  presuppose  the  subject-object  relation, 
but  is  this  true  also  of  the  simpler  perceptual  stage  of  ex- 
perience? Could  a  creature,  depending  upon  impressions 
and  upon  learning  by  habit  without  any  images,  say  7  ?  This 
does  not  seem  likely,  because  there  is  no  conscious  context, 
which  assimilates.  In  all  experience,  too,  there  must  be  a 
beginning,  a  bare  "awareness  of"  without  any  "knowledge 
about,"  i.e.  without  any  associative  context  to  react,  where 
our  experience  is  the  light  or  the  pain  rather  than  has  it.  I  do 
not  see  how  such  experience  could  have  the  consciousness  of 
"two  inseparable  factors,  objects  of  experience  and  experiencing 
subject."  In  my  own  experience  in  waking  up  gradually  after 
having  been  struck  by  lightning  and  snowed  under  in  a  storm  on 
Grays  Peak,  I  could  remember  afterwards  when  I  was  a  mass 
of  pain  and  discomfort  with  no  associations  suggested  in  the 
way  of  danger  or  death.  I  could  remember  having  seen  the 
form  of  a  man  moving  down  the  mountain  side.  But  it  was 
not  until  some  time  afterward  that  the  perceptual  picture 
suggested  man  and  a  futile  cry  for  help  and  not  till  long  after- 
wards that  the  perception  suggested  my  companion  and  that 

1  Ebbinghaus,  "  Grundziige,"  Vol.  I,  p.  10. 
»  "  Principles  of  Psychology,"  Vol.  II,  p.  277. 


KNOWING  MINDS  157 

the  scene  itself  came  back  to  me.  There  was  certainly  a  period 
there  of  pure  perception,  while  the  associative  context  was  as 
paralyzed  as  my  bodily  movements.  It  would  seem  that  there 
is  a  simpler  state  of  consciousness  than  the  /  and  me  relation 
—  the  state  of  bare  awareness,  which,  of  course,  is  not  broken 
up  except  by  a  more  complex  consciousness,  which  reflects 
upon  it.  Leaving  aside,  however,  the  question  of  the  univer- 
sality of  the  subject-object  consciousness,  what  does  it  mean 
when  we  do  have  it?  And  is  it  such  a  mystery? 

The  mystery  of  the  subject-object  relation  seems  to  disappear 
when  we  bring  a  little  psychological  analysis  to  bear.  Ab- 
stracting from  consciousness  as  bare  awareness,  we  must  make 
clear  to  ourselves  what  we  mean  by  the  subject-object  relation 
in  the  concrete;  and  then  we  shall  see  that  it  is  a  selective 
context  responding  to  a  specific  content  —  the  datum.  The 
quality  of  myness  is  a  function  of  the  datum-being-selected 
by  this  individual  interest.  In  other  words,  to  say  this  is 
my  object  of  consciousness  and  to  say  I  am  interested  in  this 
object  are  two  different  ways  of  saying  the  same  thing.  The 
I  or  subject  in  this  relation  is  the  active  associative  context, 
which  we  call  interest,  solicited  by  or  striving  to  find  its  object, 
the  me.  In  order  to  get  rid  of  ages  of  false  association  we  may 
call  this  context  the  referent,  and  the  datum  which  is  selected 
the  relatum.  Now  my  contention  is  that  there  is  no  absolute 
or  constant  relation  between  the  selective  context,  the  referent, 
and  the  selected  object,  the  relatum.  On  the  contrary,  the 
distinction  is  relative  to  point  of  view  and  relative  to  time.  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  relative  to  point  of  view.  This  may  be  true 
within  the  same  physical  individual,  as  in  the  case  of  the  divided 
self.  In  deliberation,  the  point  of  view  shifts  while  the  systems 
seem  exclusive  and  constant.  Now  one  system  is  tried  out 
with  reference  to  its  antagonistic  systems.  And  again  the 
activity  shifts  to  another  system  with  its  scale  of  values.  But 
the  struggle  is  precisely  between  coexisting  and  conflicting 
points  of  view.  There  is  of  course  some  common  and  constant 
group  of  tendencies  which  figures  in  the  various  systems  and 
which  accounts  for  the  shifting  of  attention.  It  is  this  common 
group  of  more  or  less  explicit  tendencies  which  gives  rise  to 
the  feeling  of  outside  push  as  regards  the  process  of  delibera- 


158  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

tion.  The  systems  in  intense  moral  struggle  may  coexist  an- 
tagonistically for  some  time  —  each  with  a  strong  individual 
consciousness,  and  each  struggling  for  the  place  of  mastery, 
now  one,  now  the  other  occupying  the  focal  place  —  the  lower 
taking  the  higher  captive,  the  higher  in  turn  summoning  its 
energies  against  the  lower,  each  very  much  alive  and  strug- 
gling for  existence.  In  insanity  we  have  cases  of  actual  disrup- 
tion of  the  various  systems,  when  a  man  feels  himself  to  be  not 
one  but  many  —  thoroughly  bewildered  in  the  shifting  and 
many-headed  focus,  as  to  which  is  I  rather  than  the  other. 
In  [every  case  of  social  communication  where  one  system  of 
meanings  strives  to  understand  another,  the  relation  of  referent 
and  relatum  is  reciprocal  and  a  matter  of  point  of  view. 

Not  only  is  the  relation  of  I  and  me  relative  as  between 
coexisting  systems,  internal  or  social,  with  their  respective 
points  of  view.  But  the  same  associates  may  be  part,  now  of 
the  referent  and  now  of  the  relatum,  in  the  one  personal  history. 
In  recalling  a  forgotten  name,  we  use  the  meaning  to  find  the 
name.  The  system  of  associations  with  its  leading  is  the 
referent,  the  name  the  relatum.  But  having  gotten  the  name, 
we  reverse  the  process  and  use  the  name  with  its  larger  context 
to  fix  the  meaning.  It  is  my  purpose  to  open  a  refractory 
door.  This  system  of  tendencies,  the  referent,  hunts  about  for 
means,  the  relatum.  But  in  trying  to  solve  the  door  situation, 
the  purpose  becomes  aware  of  its  own  vagueness  and  limitations. 
It  thus  reverses  itself  in  a  measure;  the  door-consciousness 
with  its  associations  defines  the  purpose  to  open  and  both  are 
taken  up  into  the  larger  context  which  was  implicit  in  the  pro- 
cedure —  getting  what  I  wanted  in  the  room,  etc.  The  relation 
of  I  and  me  then  is  not  a  constant  or  absolute  relation.  There 
is  no  more  mystery  about  the  I  than  about  the  me.  What 
figures  one  moment  as  part  of  the  tension  of  the  apperceiving 
factor  may  figure  the  next  moment  as  part  of  the  tension  of 
the  apperceived.  They  are  both  functions  of  a  more  or  less 
definite  system  of  tendencies  which  strives  to  realize  itself  and 
which  we  may  call  the  self  in  the  inclusive  sense. 

If  this  theory  is  true,  it  should  follow  as  a  corollary,  that 
self-consciousness,  i.e.  consciousness  of  the  I  and  me  type, 
should  be  prominent  in  proportion  to  the  activity  of  attention, 


KNOWING  MINDS  159 

being  particularly  obtrusive  in  the  moments  of  embarrassment 
and  frustration,  while  approaching  the  vanishing  point  with 
the  fluency  of  the  ongoing  of  consciousness,  when  the  felt 
unity  radiates  in  all  directions  of  the  prevailing  purpose.  This 
seems  actually  carried  out  by  the  facts  of  experience.  It  is 
when  the  developing  purpose  is  brought  to  halt,  is  balked  for 
the  time  being,  that  the  consciousness  of  meaning  and  datum, 
referent  and  relatum,  becomes  painfully  strong.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  the  flow  is  uninterrupted,  when  the  purpose  is 
absorbed  in  the  transitions  from  phase  to  phase,  whether  the 
fascination  be  intellectual,  practical  or  aesthetic,  the  dualism  of 
I  and  me  approaches  its  vanishing  point  until  lost  in  the  mystic 
trance  —  the  passive,  coalescent  state  of  attention. 

Hume  in  speaking  of  the  self  as  a  "bundle  of  perceptions" 
fails  to  take  account  of  the  active  character  of  the  referent 
factor  in  the  subject-object  relation.  The  self,  whenever  we 
are  really  awake,  is  an  active  bundle  of  more  or  less  systematized 
tendencies  striving  to  appropriate  or  adapt  itself  to  an  external 
context,  the  datum.  It  is  the  latter  context  that  has  the 
stubborn  perceptual  character.  The  self  is  not  a  bundle  of 
perceptions.  It  is  a  bundle  of  tendencies,  leadings,  purposive 
striving.  This  is  the  substantial  core  of  the  ego,  but  it  is  a 
shifting,  moving  core,  an  organization  which  comes  to  conscious- 
ness through  conflict,  not  a  blank  entity  which  is  merely  ex- 
ternally related  to  certain  objects.  The  perceptions,  whether 
internal  or  external,  are  the  facts  taken  account  of  —  the  me. 
You  can't  have  an  outside  without  an  inside ;  and  Hume 1 
made  the  self  all  outside.  You  must  add  to  the  content  factor 
an  active  apperceiving  factor. 

While  it  is  true,  moreover,  that  the  process  of  knowing  always 
implies  one  context  added  to  another,  in  an  empirical  situation, 
we  must  not  neglect  the  unique  relation  of  the  factors  involved. 
The  addition  is  not  a  mere  external  addition,  but  one  of  crea- 
tive synthesis,  analogous  to  chemical  addition  rather  than  to 
mathematical.  This  creative  addition  is  the  unique  relation 
of  interest.  There  is  nothing  to  show  that  it  alters  the  char- 
acter of  the  factors  —  the  object  known  or  the  context  knowing 
—  in  other  ways.  While  there  is  some  doubt  as  to  whether  the 

1  "  Treatise  on  Human  Nature,"  Vol.  I,  Pt.  IV,  §  6. 


160  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

selective  reaction,  which  we  call  attention,  intensifies  the  data 
emphasized,  the  qualities  and  relations  of  the  data  remain  the 
same.  We  do  not  create  them  by  taking  account  of  them.  The 
cat  does  not  create  the  king  by  looking  at  him.  Nor  does  he 
add  a  cubit  to  his  stature.  What  is  added  by  the  interest 
relation  is  subjective  clearness  and  significance. 

The  difference  between  the  two  factors  in  the  interest  rela- 
tion cannot  be  resolved  into  the  greater  or  less  permanency 
of  the  associates  involved  in  each  case.  This  seems  to  be  the 
theory  of  William  James:  "The  two  collections,  first  of  its 
cohesive,  and,  second,  of  its  loose  associates,  inevitably  come  to 
be  contrasted.  We  call  the  first  collection  the  system  of 
external  realities,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  room,  as  'real/ 
exists;  the  other  we  call  the  stream  of  our  internal  thinking, 
in  which,  as  a  'mental  image/  it  for  a  moment  floats.  The 
room  thus  gets  counted  twice  over."  1  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  apperception  context  need  not  be  less  cohesive  than  the 
context  taken  account  of.  It  may  be,  and  often  is,  the  more 
permanent  of  the  two.  The  meaning  or  attitude  may  remain 
constant  though  the  object  changes.  Our  loyalty  may  remain 
through  the  objective  vicissitudes  of  a  lifetime.  Without  this 
constancy  in  our  tendencies,  the  concept  of  constancy  would 
be  impossible.  As  to  the  object  being  counted  twice,  this  is 
only  an  afterthought  when  we  contrast  memory  with  'percep- 
tion. In  our  perceptual  judgments,  the  object  is  counted 
only  once,  i.e.  as  being  in  its  own  context,  though  it  may,  of 
course,  be  counted  wrongly  as  between  objective  contexts. 
This  is  what  happens  in  illusion. 

The  unique  character  of  the  referent  context  consists  in  the 
fact  that  one  factor  or  ingredient  in  the  context  is  conative 
tendency.  It  is  true  that  the  subject-object  relation  is  in 
part  reversible.  But  this  is  as  regards  its  contents  or  associates, 
not  as  regards  the  unique  attitude  itself.  It  is  the  objects 
which  may  figure  twice  over,  —  or  rather  be  identical  in  a 
large  number  of  contexts,  —  as  part  of  a  context  of  interest, 
and  also  as  having  certain  relations,  temporal,  spatial,  causal, 
etc.,  to  other  contexts.  The  uniquely  subjective  relation  is 
a  conscious  reaction  between  a  system  of  conative  tendencies, 

1  "Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,"  p.  22. 


KNOWING   MINDS  161 

on  the  one  hand,  and  a  set  of  stimuli,  intra-organic  or  extra- 
organic,  on  the  other.  The  relation  of  interest  or  experience 
cannot  exist  unless  there  is  the  unique  reaction  of  these  two 
factors.  The  apperceptive  factor  in  this  relation  is  a  system 
of  associates,  given  direction  and  held  together  by  conative 
tendency. 

To  say  that  the  relation  of  subject  to  object  is  experience 
added  to  experience,  looks  like  the  old  fallacy  of  division. 
Experience  is  here  predicated  respectively  of  the  experienced 
stimulus,  whatever  it  may  be,  and  the  apperceiving  system,  each 
taken  in  its  abstract  capacity,  and  apart  from  the  unique  con- 
text. Neither  can  be  called  experience  until  they  constitute 
the  unique  situation  of  interest.  To  say,  therefore,  that  this 
situation  is  experience  added  to  experience,  seems  to  be  a  case 
of  putting  the  cart  before  the  horse.  James,  in  this  case, 
seems  to  have  fallen  into  the  very  intellectualism  which  he  had 
combated  all  his  life.  What  makes  us  distinguish  the  subjec- 
tive from  the  objective  factor  is  the  function  of  selection  and 
emphasis.  This  function  cannot  in  turn  be  expressed  in  terms 
of  the  selected  object  without  a  hopeless  circle. 

There  has  been  a  strenuous  metaphysical  attempt  of  late  to 
get  rid  of  end  terms  altogether  in  the  interest  relation.  We  are 
told  that  the  pure  stuff  or  content  of  reality  is  entirely  neutral, 
and  that  the  seeming  difference  in  kind  is  due  merely  to  the 
external  relations  in  different  contexts.  Says  James:  "There 
is  no  general  stuff  of  which  experience  at  large  is  made.  There 
are  as  many  stuffs  as  there  are  'natures'  in  the  things  experi- 
enced. If  you  ask  what  any  bit  of  pure  experience  is  made  of, 
the  answer  is  always  the  same  :  'It  is  made  of  that,  of  just  what 
appears,  of  space,  of  intensity,  of  flatness,  brownness,  heaviness, 
or  what  not.'  "  *  Again  :  "  Thoughts  in  the  concrete  are  made 
of  the  same  stuff  as  things  are."  2  The  same  idea  has  been 
championed  by  E.  B.  Holt :  "The  entities  of  the  universe  have 
no  substance,  but  if  the  spirit  is  weak  to  understand,  then  let 
flesh,  for  a  season,  here  predicate  a  neutral  substance.  These 
entities  are  related  by  external  relations.  A  consciousness  is  the 
group  of  (neutral)  entities  to  which  a  nervous  system,  both  at 
one  moment  and  in  the  course  of  its  life  history,  responds  with 

1  "Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,"  pp.  26,  27.  2  Ibid.  p.  37. 


162  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

a  specific  response."  1  With  Holt,  however,  this  neutrality 
seems  to  resolve  itself,  in  the  last  analysis,  into  a  materialistic 
atomism.  With  James,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  part  of  the 
philosophy  of  pure  experience  from  which  subject  and  object 
are  regarded  as  abstracted  by  subsequent  reflection. 

There  seems  to  be  an  ambiguity  here  as  between  the  expe- 
rience relation,  and  what  is  experienced.  What  is  experienced 
may  be  any  kind  of  thing,  physical  or  mental,  that  can  make 
a  difference  to  our  conative  purposes.  Our  thoughts  in  the 
concrete  may  very  well  have  things  as  their  contents ;  and  then 
there  is  no  difference,  of  course,  between  the  content  of  thoughts 
and  things.  They  may,  however,  have  mental  processes  as 
their  contents.  In  any  case,  such  an  ambiguous  metaphysi- 
cal use  of  the  term  experience  at  best  obliterates  what  have 
proven  pragmatically  useful  distinctions.  It  does  not  help 
us  to  understand  the  unique  character  of  the  relation  where  one 
context  evaluates  and  takes  account  of  another  context.  Duality 
there  is,  somehow,  in  the  relation.  The  context  which  knows, 
or  is  interested,  is  an  integral  volitional  context,  and  not 
merely  an  ensemble  of  externally  related  contents.  What  the 
ultimate  stuff  of  reality  is,  that  is  another  question,  and  must 
be  determined  by  the  requirements  which  we  must  meet  in  the 
realization  of  our  purposes. 

The  prejudice  against  end  terms  in  the  knowledge  relation, 
and  the  consequent  attempt  to  eliminate  terms  altogether  has 
a  double  reason.  One  is  a  metaphysical  reason.  It  is  a  protest 
against  the  occult  conception  of  mind  as  a  substance,  outside 
of  and  irrelevant  to  the  stream  of  conscious  processes.  With 
this  protest,  we  must  agree  so  far,  that  the  mind  must  figure 
in  the  empirical  situations,  and  must  be  known  as  regards  its 
properties  and  constancies  precisely  in  such  situations.  The 
other  reason  is  epistemological,  and  is  a  protest  against  sub- 
jective idealism,  which  makes  the  existence  of  the  object  de- 
pend upon  being  taken  account  of,  or  figuring  for  the  time  being 
as  part  of  our  conative  interest.  With  this  protest,  too,  we  must 
essentially  agree.  Our  being  interested  in  an  object  does  not 
create  it,  —  does  not  constitute  either  its  existence  or  its 
objective  qualities.  That  the  tree  is  part  of  a  physical  space 

1  "The  New  Realism,"  pp.  372,  373. 


KNOWING  MINDS  163 

context  is  not  due  to  our  noticing  it.  Even  that  it  is  green  is 
not  due  to  our  taking  account  of  it,  but  to  the  energetic  relation 
between  certain  light  waves  and  our  physiological  organization. 
Nor  do  our  mental  structures  come  into  existence  with  our 
taking  account  of  them.  They  have  a  context  of  their  own 
which  we  must  recognize.  Our  interest  brings  a  new  qualifica- 
tion to  the  energies  which  are  taken  account  of.  But  their 
properties  and  relations  outside  of  this  must  be  regarded  as 
external  to  the  cognitive  relation,  i.e.  as  having  an  existence 
of  their  own  whether  mental  or  physical.  Only  so  is  science 
possible. 

What  we  insist  is  that  the  relation  of  interest  is  a  real  and 
unique  relation  when  it  exists.  And  it  involves  a  conative  con- 
stitution as  one  of  its  reagents.  There  is  nothing  mysterious 
or  occult  about  this,  any  more  than  there  is  about  the  relation 
H20.  Each  is  a  unique  energetic  result.  Each  must  be  rec- 
ognized in  its  own  right.  The  relation  of  mind  to  stimulus 
in  the  case  of  interest  is  no  more  neutral  than  any  other  energetic 
action  is  neutral.  But  what  do  we  mean  by  mind? 


CHAPTER  X 

KNOWING  MINDS  (Continued) 

IV 

IN  taking  up  the  question :  What  is  mental  f  we  must  be 
warned  at  the  outset  that  the  phrase,  "  in  the  mind,"  is  an  ambig- 
uous phrase.  In  a  sense,  anything  to  which  we  attend  is  in 
the  mind  for  the  time  being,  i.e.  it  figures  as  part  of  our  field 
of  interest,  but  it  is  not  therefore  mental.  G.  F.  Stout  suggests 
as  a  criterion  of  a  fact  being  mental  that  it  is  so  dependent  upon 
mind,  that  if  mind  should  cease  to  exist,  it  would  cease  to  exist 
also.  This  may  be  granted,  but  it  assumes  that  we  already 
know  what  is  meant  by  mind.  Stout  and  Alexander  agree  in 
defining  mind  as  "the  subject  of  activity  in  the  way  of  cona- 
tion and  attention,  and  also  of  feeling  in  the  way  of  pleasure 
and  pain."  1  We  may  agree  that  will  or  conative  tendency, 
which  we  know  in  connection  with  attention  and  interest,  is 
mental.  Let  us  see  how  far  we  can  apply  Stout's  criterion, 
and  to  what  results  it  will  lead. 

G.  E.  Moore  feels  certain  that  consciousness,  in  the  sense  of 
awareness,  is  a  mental  fact.  It  is  the  only  thing  that  is  common 
and  peculiar  to  all  experiences  —  the  only  thing  which  gives 
us  the  reason  for  calling  a  fact  mental.2  Thus  "the  sensation 
of  blue  includes  in  its  analysis  beside  blue,  both  a  unique  ele- 
ment awareness,  and  a  unique  relation  of  this  element  to  blue."  3 
The  nature  of  this  awareness  is  such  "that  its  object,  when  we 
are  aware  of  it,  is  precisely  what  it  would  be  if  we  were  not 
aware."  4 

Now  that  consciousness  is  such  a  neutral  light,  I  have  tried 

1  Arist.  Proc.,  1908-1909,  "Are  Presentations  Mental  or  Physical?"  p.  227. 

2  "  The  Refutation  of  Idealism,"  Mind,  1903,  pp.  452,  453.     See  also  Arist. 
Proc.,   1909-1910,  pp.  38-40. 

3  Ibid.,  1903,  p.  450.  *  Ibid.,  p.  453. 

164 


KNOWING  MINDS  165 

to  show  elsewhere.  But  I  cannot  agree  with  Mr.  Moore  that 
consciousness  is  mental.  "'Mental,'  in  one  of  its  senses  and 
its  most  fundamental  sense,"  says  Mr.  Moore,  "  is,  I  think, 
merely  another  way  of  saying  that  the  entity  said  to  be  mental 
is  an  act  of  consciousness.  So  that,  in  this  sense  of  the  word, 
that  which  distinguishes  mental  entities  from  those  which  are 
not  mental  would  be  simply  the  fact  that  the  former  are  acts 
of  consciousness,  whereas  the  latter  are  not  mental.  A  red 
color  is  certainly  not  an  act  of  consciousness  in  the  sense  in 
which  my  seeing  of  it  is."  1  This  seems  an  arbitrary  definition 
of  mental.  It  is  not  obvious  that  mental  processes,  such  as 
conative  tendencies,  must  be  conscious  in  order  to  exist.  Con- 
sciousness is  added  to  them  in  certain  energetic  relations,  but 
it  does  not  make  them  exist  any  more  than  it  makes  the  physical 
processes  exist.  Our  will  attitudes  continue  to  exist  and  to 
change  when  we  are  not  conscious  of  them,  as  when  we  are 
asleep.  Even  in  conscious  activity,  not  all  of  mind  can  be 
said  to  be  conscious.  Therefore  consciousness  is  not  an  essen- 
tial characteristic  of  mental. 

Neither  can  we  regard  " mental  acts,"  in  Mr.  Moore's  sense, 
as  purely  mental.  Such  processes  as  perceiving  involve,  as 
we  shall  see  later,  physical  elements.  I  would  say  that  in  our 
awareness  of  blue,  there  are  involved  three  factors :  There  is 
the  energetic  physical  situation,  including  the  action  of  light 
upon  our  organism.  There  is  further  the  selective  reaction 
to  this  physical  situation.  And  there  is,  added  to  this,  the  fact 
of  consciousness.  This  is  a  non-mental  fact,  and  makes  possible 
the  awareness  of  the  energetic  relation.  It  is  no  more  mental 
than  pure  space ;  and,  like  pure  space,  it  is  neutral  as  regards 
the  contents  within  it,  i.e.  it  permits  of  free  mobility  so  far 
as  it  is  concerned.  If  we  represent  the  action  of  the  physical 
situation  upon  the  conative  constitution  under  the  form  of 
three  dimensions,  we  would  have  to  add  a  fourth  dimension 
to  represent  the  fact  of  awareness.  The  fact,  furthermore, 
that  we  know  consciousness  only  in  connection  with  certain 
conative  activities,  does  not  prove  that  consciousness  can  only 
exist  under  such  conditions,  i.e.  that  it  would  be  destroyed  if 
mind  is  destroyed ;  nor  does  it  prove  that  mind  can  exist  only 

1  Arist.  Proc.,  1909-1910,  pp.  39  and  40. 


166  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

when  it  is  conscious  of  itself.  That  we  can  only  know  a  fact 
in  conscious  situations  is  mere  tautology. 

If  we  now  take  up  the  contents  of  mind,1  it  would  seem  that 
the  sense  data  cannot  be  regarded  as  mental.  Blue  is  the 
result  of  a  certain  action  of  a  physical  energy,  light,  upon  our  eye- 
camera,  and  upon  the  nervous  system.  We  do  not  in  any  wise 
originate  the  quality  blue  or  alter  it  by  attending  to  it,  though 
it  comes  to  have  significance  when  we  do  so.  A  sense  quality 
is  a  purely  physical  fact.  It  is  true  that  the  so-called  relativity 
of  sense  qualities  has  been  urged  against  their  objective  reality 
from  Protagoras  to  Stout.  They  vary  with  the  specific  struc- 
tures of  the  sense  organs,  with  the  position  and  distance  of  the 
observer,  and  with  pathological  conditions  in  the  observer.2 
But  the  relativity  of  sense  qualities  does  not  differ  from  the 
relativity  of  any  other  energetic  relations  in  nature.  Other 
energies,  too,  require  special  conditions  for  their  manifestation ; 
they  vary  with  their  space  relations;  they  fail  to  answer  ex- 
pectancies under  defective  conditions.  To  be  sure,  in  the  case 
of  some  of  our  sensations,  the  quality  is  very  much  confused 
by  its  fusion  with  other  qualities  and,  especially  in  the  case  of 
organic  sensations,  by  its  fusion  with  the  affective  tone  of 
agreeable  or  disagreeable.  In  such  cases,  we  must,  of  course, 
admit  the  psychological  difficulty  of  analysis,  but  that  does  not 
make  the  sense  quality,  so  far  as  it  exists,  less  dependent  upon 
the  physical  situation.  We  no  more  make  the  quality  of  pain 
by  attending  to  it  than  we  make  the  quality  blue.  It  is  ob- 
vious that  destroying  attention  would  not  destroy  the  sense 
qualities,  though  they  would  no  longer  be  sensations,  in  the 
sense  of  facts  of  interest.  Stumpf  and  others  have  done  ex- 
cellent service  in  pointing  out  unnoticed  sense  data.  A  sound, 
not  attended  to  at  the  time,  strictly  speaking  becomes  a  sensa- 
tion only  when  we  attend  to  it,  and  that  may  be  after  the 
stimulus  itself  has  ceased. 

But  if  sense  qualities  are  physical,  what  about  sensory  ele- 
ments as  we  know  them  through  revival  in  perception,  and  as 
they  exist  in  images?  These,  too,  we  must  regard  as  physical 

1  In  the  discussion  of  mental  contents,  I  am  much  indebted  to  S.  Alexander's 
paper,  "  On  Sensations  and  Images,"  Arist.  Proc.,  1909-1910,  pp.  1-35. 
9  See  Stout,  Arist.  Proc.,  1908-1909,  pp.  237  f . 


KNOWING  MINDS  167 

even  though  the  immediate  continuity  with  the  outer  energies 
has  ceased  to  exist.  They  are  the  persisting  excitements  of 
such  stimuli,  having  the  same  quality  as  the  original  situation 
though,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  having  less  intensity.  They 
are  as  physical  as  the  persistent  effects  recorded  by  the  film  of 
the  camera. 

I  would  not  say  that  all  the  contents  of  our  mental  operations 
are  physical.  For  the  will  may  attend  to  its  own  operations. 
It  may  take  stock  of  its  own  tendencies  and  purposes  within 
its  own  complexity.  These,  no  more  than  the  sense  data, 
originate  or  alter  in  character  with  our  awareness.  The  ob- 
served facts  here  must  change  location  from  the  subject  context 
to  the  object  context,  i.e.  they  must  be  abstracted  from  their 
concrete  setting.  But  they  do  as  a  matter  of  fact  persist  in  such 
a  shifting.  We  can  take  account  of  their  character  and  can  ana- 
lyze them.  Nor  is  such  awareness  an  awareness  of  a  past  moment. 
That  is  absurd  by  definition.  What  is  past  is  their  functional 
position  in  the  subject  context.  They  now  figure  with  other  con- 
tents in  the  more  abstract  and  artificial  object  construct.  What 
we  feel  so  keenly  in  our  mental  analysis  is  that  much  is  left  out  of 
which  we  are  aware  as  of  prime  importance  in  the  flow  and  con- 
creteness  of  real  life.  But  this,  of  course,  is  true  of  physical 
reality,  too,  even  though  here  we  have  not  the  same  immediacy 
of  acquaintance  with  the  inner  movement. 

Even  in  what  we  are  accustomed  to  regard  as  mental  data, 
much  remains  that  is  physical.  In  the  gross  affective  fusions 
which  we  call  emotions,  the  bulk  of  the  process,  as  has  been 
clearly  shown  by  recent  psychology,  is  sensational  in  character. 
Whether  we  wholly  adopt  the  James-Lange  theory  or  not,  we 
must  agree  that  the  inchoate  and  confused  mass  of  organic 
sensations,  resulting  from  the  instinctive  reaction,  gives  the 
character  and  warmth  to  the  special  emotions.  Compared 
with  this,  the  affective  tone  proper,  which  certainly  does  enter 
in  as  a  factor,  is  thin  and  abstract. 

When  we  come  to  the  feelings,  here  it  would  seem  at  any  rate 
that  we  are  on  solid  psychic  ground.  But  here,  alas !  there  is 
a  hopeless  ambiguity  of  scientific  terminology.  This  is  due  in 
part  to  the  difficulty  of  analyzing  out  the  affective  quality 
proper  from  its  fusion  with  sensations  which  are  always  present 


168  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

with  it.  Some  of  these  sensations  are  clearly  distinguishable 
from  it,  such  as  motor  sensations  and  sensations  of  breathing. 
Others  are  subtle  and  diffuse,  notably  those  which  depend 
upon  our  alimentary  and  genital  systems.  These  sensations 
ordinarily  remain  below  the  threshold  of  attention,  but  while 
their  quality  is  well  nigh  impossible  to  discriminate,  their  effect 
is  vital  and  constant.  They  fuse  in  an  immediate  and  largely 
unanalyzable  way  with  the  affections  and  constitute  the  bulk 
of  what  we  recognize  in  the  concrete  as  the  tone  and  well-being 
of  the  organism.  Together  with  the  sensations  already  men- 
tioned, they  form  the  overtones  of  our  affective  life.  Indeed, 
some  maintain  that  they  constitute  it  altogether.  In  so  far 
as  we  give  the  name  feeling  to  the  fusion  as  a  whole,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  bulk  of  our  feelings,  as  well  as  our  emotions,  is 
physical  in  character,  —  the  difference  being  merely  that  the 
feelings  depend  upon  more  general  organic  reactions,  and  thus 
lack  the  specific  character  of  the  instinctive  emotions  and  the 
volume  of  their  deeper  organic  reverberations. 

Not  only  has  there  been  confusion  as  regards  the  fusion  of  the 
affective  tone  with  certain  organic  sensations,  but  there  has 
been  a  similar  difficulty  as  regards  its  fusion  with  certain  ob- 
jective qualities.  Thus  we  are  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of 
aesthetic  feelings.  Beauty  has  been  defined  as  constant  ob- 
jects of  pleasure,  as  contrasted  with  the  more  fleeting  and  un- 
certain character  of  the  mere  agreeable.  But  what  is  constant 
in  the  appreciation  of  beauty  are  the  form  qualities  or  the  con- 
tent-relations, not  the  feeling.  The  beautiful  object  may  be 
agreeable,  and  is  so  whenever  the  will  sets  itself  the  particular 
purpose  of  enjoying  beauty.  But  it  is  not  so  always.  The 
best  music  in  the  world  becomes  disagreeable  when  the  attention 
has  set  itself  the  task  of  doing  something  else  with  which  the 
musical  stimulus  interferes,  as  performing  delicate  discrimina- 
tions in  the  laboratory  for  example.  The  form  quality  of  the 
beautiful  object,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  altered  by  our  will, 
though  in  the  case  of  artificial  beauty  the  object  owes  its  form 
quality  to  the  selection  and  synthesis  of  the  will  in  the  first 
place.  The  mere  fact  that  the  feeling  of  enjoyment  can  be 
repeated  again  and  again  does  not  constitute  the  beauty  of 
the  object.  If  so,  all  the  satisfactions  of  the  constant  tendencies 


KNOWING  MINDS  169 

of  our  nature  would  be  beautiful.  The  satisfaction  of  hunger 
or  of  curiosity  is  capable  of  constant  repetition,  and  is  more 
universal  than  the  feeling  for  beauty,  but  it  is  not  beautiful. 
It  may  even  jar  on  our  sense  for  beauty.  Byron  hated  to  see 
a  woman  eat.  The  constancy  of  the  satisfaction,  in  any  case, 
lies  in  part  in  the  permanency  of  the  objective  quality,  in 
part  in  the  permanency  of  a  certain  organization  of  the  will. 
It  does  not  lie  in  the  feeling. 

What  is  psychological,  therefore,  in  our  emotions  and  feelings 
is  the  abstract  affective  tone  of  agreeable  or  disagreeable,  and 
this  seems  to  have  only  those  two  qualities.  This  is  dependent 
upon  the  will  —  its  success  or  failure  in  realizing  certain  tenden- 
cies in  terms  of  its  stimuli.  The  constancy  or  variation  of 
tone  is  a  function  of  the  dominant  tendency  or  set  of  the  will. 
Since  the  will  like  other  energies  is  predictable  in  definite  situa- 
tions, the  affective  tone  is  in  so  far  predictable. 

The  difficulty  in  knowing  the  affective  qualities  is  not  a 
difficulty  of  acquaintance.  There  is  no  mistake  about  the 
consciousness  of  the  pleasant  and  unpleasant.  Just  here  and 
only  here  the  Berkeleian  criterion  is  true  that  esse  est  percipi. 
The  difficulty  is  entirely  one  of  analysis.  And  this  difficulty 
is  twofold.  It  is  in  part  a  difficulty  of  fusion.  While  we  can 
with  comparative  ease  dissociate  the  affective  qualities  from  the 
extra-organic  sensations,  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  disso- 
ciate them  from  some  of  the  organic  sensations.  Hence  the 
difference  in  classifications.  Another  difficulty  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  since  affection  is  the  sense  of  realization  on  the  part 
of  the  will,  there  is  danger  of  changing  the  direction  of  the  will 
by  its  superadded  interest  of  analysis.  This  difficulty  is  prob- 
ably exaggerated,  as  many  processes,  particularly  those  of  the 
primitive  instincts,  have  quite  sufficient  momentum  and  in- 
dividuality to  persist  even  when  the  interest  is  thus  divided. 
Their  tone  depends,  not  upon  their  being  part  of  the  subject 
tension,  but  upon  their  realization.  In  more  delicate  cases, 
memory  can  be  used  to  eke  out  immediate  perception. 

In  so  far  as  we  look  at  thought  in  its  content  aspect  —  what 
thought  deals  with  —  this  again  is  largely  physical.  Of  course, 
we  do  form  concepts  of  mental  processes,  but  they  are  meager 
compared  with  our  concepts  of  the  objective  world.  Since 


170  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

our  laws  of  thought  are  modes  of  operating  with  objects,  these 
laws  must  be  regarded  as  relations  within  the  contents  of 
experience.  And  since  the  contents  we  deal  with  in  the  opera- 
tions of  thought  are  overwhelmingly  physical,  we  can  agree 
with  Russell  that  the  laws  of  thought  are  the  laws  of  things.1 
They  are  for  science  the  most  universal  laws  of  things,  but 
while  abstract  and  highly  useful  ways  of  handling  facts,  they 
cannot  be  assumed  to  be  a  priori  laws  of  the  universe.  As 
universal  they  are,  like  all  universals,  hypothetical.  Their 
applicability  must  continually  be  tested  through  our  success 
in  explaining  things,  including  mental  things. 

If  we  turn  now  from  our  survey  of  contents  in  the  mind  to  a 
survey  of  mental  acts  or  operations,  our  way  should  be  clearer. 
But  even  as  regards  attention,  which  seems  so  obviously  a 
manifestation  of  will,  Analysis  discloses  the  presence  of  physical 
factors.  Some  psychologists  have  tried  to  state  attention  in 
purely  intellectual  terms.  They  have  regarded  it  as  merely 
an  associative  context  of  ideas.  While  this  theory  neglects 
the  importance  of  the  guiding  and  controlling  set,  which  uses 
the  associative  mechanism  as  an  instrument  for  its  particular 
end,  the  indispensable  presence  of  the  intellectual  factor  in 
the  higher  stages  of  attention  is  indisputable.  To  get  pure 
attention  we  should  have  to  go  back  to  the  most  primitive  mani- 
festations of  the  will  in  the  individual  and  the  race  —  to  pure 
awareness  without  any  knowledge  about.  But  this  purely 
instinctive  and  impulsive  manifestation  of  interest  is,  so  far 
as  our  own  adult  experience  is  concerned,  purely  hypothetical. 
We  can  only  observe  it  inferentially  in  the  first  stages  of  mental 
history.  For  our  introspection,  the  attention  situation  has  a 
large  intellectual  admixture  where  the  physical  factors  are  fused 
with  the  strictly  mental  in  the  associative  interest  patterns  of 
memory  and  imagination. 

Not  only  are  there  present  in  the  attention  context  the  stored 
up  and  associated  sense  data  in  the  way  of  ideas ;  but  certain 
immediate  sense  data  in  the  form  of  organic  sensations,  partic- 
ularly the  motor  and  respiratory  sensations,  also  enter  in 
as  an  integral  part  of  the  fusion.  So  prominent  are  these 
that  some  psychologists,  like  William  James,  have  found  the 

1  "The  Problems  of  Philosophy,"  pp.  137,  138. 


KNOWING  MINDS  171 

basis  of  the  consciousness  of  mental  activity  in  the  motor  sensa- 
tions from  the  forehead,  throat,  etc.  James  has  gone  so  far 
as  to  say  that  the  only  subject  identifiable  in  our  various  mental 
states  is  the  "I  breathe"  :  "Let  the  case  be  what  it  may  in 
others,  I  am  as  confident  as  I  am  of  anything  that,  in  myself, 
the  stream  of  thinking  (which  I  recognize  emphatically  as  a 
phenomenon)  is  only  a  careless  name  for  what,  when  scrutinized, 
reveals  itself  to  consist  chiefly  of  the  stream  of  my  breathing. 
The  '  I  think '  which  Kant  said  must  be  able  to  accompany  all 
my  objects,  is  the  'I  breathe'  which  actually  does  accompany 
them."  1  Doubtless  it  does,  and  it  is  a  conspicuous  element  in 
the  situation  so  far  as  our  introspection  is  concerned.  But  what 
figures  in  the  foreground  of  our  introspection  is  not  necessarily 
the  most  important  factor  for  understanding  the  situation. 
While  the  "I  breathe"  accompanies  all  our  thinking,  it  does  not 
give  direction  or  motive  to  it.  This  must  be  found  in  the  will. 

In  attention  in  its  highest  stage  of  organization  —  that  of 
disjunctive  weighing  of  alternatives  —  both  the  ideational 
objects  and  the  concomitants  of  motor  sensations  have  their 
maximum  prominence.  But  here,  too,  the  conative  tendencies 
furnish  the  motives ;  and  the  direction  of  the  process  is  deter- 
mined by  the  systematic  will  which  just  through  the  conflict 
discovers  its  real  purpose,  and  pushes  forward  to  its  realization. 

Mental  acts,  therefore,  as  they  reveal  themselves  in  the 
attention  situation,  disclose  the  character  of  mind  in  an  un- 
mistakable way;  and  they  disclose  it  as  will.  Of  the  will 
thus  manifest  in  action  there  are  two  dimensions  —  attention 
and  affection.  We  cannot  identify  these,  as  has  sometimes 
been  done.  Attention  is,  at  any  rate,  logically  prior  to  affec- 
tion. There  must  be  the  releasing  of  tendency,  "  the  catching 
of  the  attention,"  before  its  movement  towards  its  realiza- 
tion can  be  felt.  Moreover,  in  automatic  attention,  affection 
sinks  to  zero.  Attention  is  the  energetic  relation  of  a  conative 
constitution  to  a  stimulus.  It  is  analogous  to  selective  action 
as  we  find  it  throughout  nature,  and  in  the  absence  of  con- 
sciousness. The  affective  tone  reenforces  or  checks  the  release, 
not  by  acting  upon  it,  but  through  the  awareness  of  its  success 
or  failure  in  realizing  its  end. 

1  "Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism"  (Longmans),  pp.  36,  37. 


172  A  REALISTIC    UNIVERSE 

If  mind  is  will,  conative  constitution,  we  must  bear  in  mind, 
on  the  one  hand,  that  will  reveals  itself  in  various  stages  of 
complexity  from  blind  instinct,  through  impulse,  desire,  and 
wish,  to  organized  character.  We  must  not,  with  Schopenhauer, 
strip  the  will  of  all  but  its  blindest  stage.  It  has  its  own  capa- 
city for  development  and  for  conservation  of  results  —  its 
own  Karma,  not  only  as  regards  possible  future  existences, 
but  from  moment  to  moment  of  this  existence.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  it  is  only  as  the 
will  figures  in  certain  physical  and  social  continuities,  —  operates 
through  the  tools  of  physical  processes  and  deals  with  physical 
contents  for  the  sake  of  common  understandings,  —  that  it 
comes  to  know  its  existence  and  properties. 

The  tools  by  means  of  which  the  will  operates  on  the  instinc- 
tive level  are  organic  structures.  These  have  the  advantage, 
once  having  been  established  through  survival  selection,  of 
being  definitely  adapted  to  certain  situations.  But  the  difficulty 
is  that  it  requires  a  long  and  costly  process  to  establish  them  — 
a  process  in  which  the  race  alone  counts,  the  individual  is 
sacrificed.  And,  again,  having  become  established  they  are 
stereotyped ;  they  cannot  meet  radical  changes  of  the  environ- 
ment. 

As  instruments  for  action,  therefore,  the  will  needs  to  supple- 
ment the  organic  tools  of  instinct  with  more  economic  and  ad- 
justable tools.  In  doing  so,  the  will  also  liberates  itself  more 
and  more  from  the  body,  and  becomes  conscious  of  its  own 
reality  and  value.  Adjustment  by  organic  habit  is  more  eco- 
nomic than  organic  structures ;  memory  images  vastly  shorten 
the  process ;  and  abstraction  with  its  artificial  symbols  and  its 
material  tools  gives  the  will  the  maximum  of  efficiency  as 
well  as  the  greatest  freedom  of  activity  and  sense  of  realization. 

We  have  thus  seen  that  the  will  is  dependent  upon  physical 
instruments  —  hereditary  physiological  structures,  physiological 
habits,  and  upon  the  physical  qualities  which  go  to  make  up 
the  content  of  images,  and  largely  of  abstract  thought.  These 
tools,  enormously  important  as  they  are  for  the  will,  are  not 
to  be  confused  with  the  will  itself.  They  are  not  mental  at  all. 
Where  the  will  manifests  itself  is  in  the  conative  tendencies 
which  give  intent,  motive,  and  cumulative  unity  to  the  self's 


KNOWING  MINDS  173 

operations.  And  wherever  interest  figures  as  part  of  the  cement 
and  leading,  there  is  the  will  proportionally  prominent  and 
efficacious.  The  adaptation  to  ends  is  largely  physical  in  the 
case  of  instinct ;  it  is  less  so  in  learning  by  habit,  as  here  the 
success  of  the  conative  tendency  helps  to  fix  the  habit  by  its 
effect  on  organic  processes.  In  perceptual  fusion  and  contiguous 
association,  interest,  somehow,  is  an  essential  condition  in  es- 
tablishing the  habitual  linkage ;  in  association  by  similars  its 
selective  agency  is  still  more  prominent ;  and  in  ideal  construc- 
tion the  physical  processes  become  obviously  instrumental  in 
the  realization  of  a  free  self-conscious  purpose.  While  in- 
strumental, however,  the  physical  staging  of  the  will  remains 
nevertheless  important  in  supporting  the  freer  superstructure. 
Physiological  habit  and  contiguity  remain  necessary  means  of 
conserving  the  selective  results  of  experience  for  further  use, 
however  much  the  will  may  intersect  and  select  within  the 
habitual  connections. 

So  far  as  the  modes  of  the  will  are  concerned,  these  can  only 
be  known  as  they  unfold  themselves  in  its  selective  reactions. 
Each  instinct  reveals  a  fundamental  mode  of  will  —  a  theme 
which  is  organized  in  ever  greater  complexity  through  its 
racial  and  individual  development.  It  becomes  the  will  to 
live,  the  will  to  own,  the  will  to  enjoy,  the  will  to  sympathize, 
the  will  to  know,  and  so  on  through  its  varying  and  com- 
plex motifs.  If  the  will  is  dependent  upon  a  physical  world 
and  its  contents  for  its  realization,  it  is  in  turn  the  reaction 
of  the  will  which  makes  the  meaning  and  value  of  life  possible. 

As  an  energy  the  will  resembles  fundamentally  other  energies. 
It  must  be  known  through  its  effects  in  definite  situations.  It 
is  to  a  large  extent  practically  predictable.  Like  other  energies, 
it  possesses  inertia.  It  requires  a  certain  amount  of  stimulus 
—  either  a  physical  shock  or  an  inner  rhythm  —  to  arouse  it. 
Being  roused,  a  certain  energy  must  be  taken  away  before  it 
subsides  into  rest.  It  is  a  definite  quantity :  a  greater  emphasis 
in  one  direction  means  the  withdrawal  of  interest  in  other 
directions.  Will  energy  bears  definite  relations  to  other 
energies,  even  though  we  find  difficulty  in  reducing  them  to 
exact  quantitative  measurement. 

In  answer  to  the  question:   What  is  mental?  we  must  say, 


174  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

then,  that  the  will  in  its  various  stages  of  organization  is  mental, 
and  with  it  is  bound  up  its  pure  affective  tone  of  agreeable 
or  disagreeable.  The  remainder  of  what  we  speak  of  as  in 
the  mind  we  must  regard  as  physical.  In  order  to  be  known, 
the  will  must  figure  as  a  living  activity,  as  part  of  the  context 
which  we  call  subject  in  the  subject-object  relation.  It  includes 
in  its  apperceptive  activity  an  associative  context,  but  this  is 
energized  or  set,  in  a  unique  way,  by  the  dominant  tendency. 
Associates,  contents,  whether  physical  contents  or  the  will's 
persistent  tendencies  and  results  may  figure  as  part  either  of 
the  subject  or  object,  but  not  the  unique  activity  of  the  will 
itself.  Destroy  this,  and  you  destroy  mind.  This  is  the  real 
core  of  the  ego.  It  is  not  an  occult  substance,  but  an  energy 
which  is  known  through  its  effects  on  other  energies,  and  which 
thus  knows  itself.  The  situations  in  which  the  will  discovers 
itself  are  intersubjective  relations  where  will  confronts  will 
in  the  tension  of  common  problems. 

I  cannot  agree  with  Stout  that  conation  and  feeling  are  not 
merely  known  through  experience  as  a  tree  may  be,  but  are 
themselves  experiences.1  While  feeling  is  doubtless  bound  up 
with  certain  organic  excitements  and  with  consciousness,  I 
cannot  see  that  the  case  of  the  will  differs  fundamentally  from 
that  of  the  tree  so  far  as  experience  is  concerned,  except  in  so  far 
as  the  will  may  figure  in  the  attitude  of  knowing,  may  be  con- 
scious of  its  own  procedure.  The  tree  so  far  as  we  can  see  can 
be  only  object  in  the  experience  relation;  it  cannot  be  subject. 
Neither,  however,  is  created  by  being  experienced.  Expe- 
rience is  only  another  name  for  the  unique  relation  which  we  call 
interest;  and  I  cannot  see  why  the  will  is  dependent  for  its 
existence  upon  noticing  itself,  or  being  noticed  perhaps  by 
another  will,  any  more  than  the  tree  is  thus  dependent.  The 
will  discovers  itself  through  the  same  energetic  relations  as  it 
discovers  things.  It  is  only  as  it  enters  into  the  interesting 
situations  that  it  becomes  aware  of  its  own  existence  or  expe- 
riences itself.  And  then  it  discovers  itself  only  piecemeal,  as 
it  discovers  things  piecemeal,  in  different  situations.  It  is 
not  conscious  of  its  whole  self  in  one  act.  It  has  many  proper- 
ties, and  these  are  often  contradictory  and  inhibit  each  other. 

1  Arist.  Proc.,  1908-1909,  p.  244. 


KNOWING   MINDS  175 

If  it  is  surprised  at  the  novelty  in  the  situations  which  it  faces 
in  the  world  of  objective  reality,  it  is  no  less  surprised  at  the 
new  instincts,  tendencies,  and  meanings  which  come  to  light 
within  its  own  constitution.  Experience  is  but  a  relation  into 
which  the  will  enters  and  where  the  light  of  consciousness  is 
thrown  upon  it. 


When  we  come  to  the  identity  of  the  self,  we  must  hold  that 
the  self,  like  physical  things,  is  just  as  constant  as  we  can  take 
it  —  as  constant  as  its  activities  and  contents ;  as  its  ability 
to  satisfy  social  expectancies.  What  is  the  use  of  assuming,  be- 
side this  constancy  of  the  stream  of  consciousness,  an  external 
entity  to  make  the  process  constant?  Such  an  entity  is  ob- 
viously an  afterthought,  an  hypostasis  of  the  fact  of  constancy 
itself.  It  makes  the  processes  neither  more  nor  less  constant 
than  they  actually  are  in  the  flow  of  experience.  As  the 
organic  sensations  constitute  a  constant  background  in  the 
changes  of  mental  life,  they  play  an  important  part  in  our 
consciousness  of  identity.  They  furnish  largely  the  warmth 
and  tone  of  personality ;  and  disorganization  of  these  sensations 
produces  serious  disturbances  in  our  sense  of  self;  yet  to  fur- 
nish the  meaning  of  identity,  there  must  also  be  certain  con- 
stant tendencies,  which  furnish  the  leading  or  active  thread  of 
experience  in  the  panoramic  and  shifting  scenes  of  feelings, 
perceptions,  and  ideas. 

Kant  is  quite  right  that  the  consciousness  of  succession  is  a 
different  fact  from  successive  states  of  consciousness.  But  it 
does  not  follow  that  the  consciousness  of  succession  requires 
any  transcendental  unity  outside  of  the  stream  of  experience. 
The  consciousness  of  succession  means  that  a  relatively  perma- 
nent system  of  tendency,  in  order  to  realize  its  will,  must 
take  account  of  the  coming  and  going  of  contents  —  must 
emphasize  the  constant  as  over  against  the  fleeting  in  order  to 
establish  definite  expectancies.  What  furnishes  the  pragmatic 
substance  is  precisely  this  core  of  permanent  tendency  and 
associations  in  the  midst  of  the  flux.  What  is  the  use  of  dupli- 
cating this  identity  by  assuming  another  identity  to  account 
for  it  and  so  on  ad  infinitum  f  Why  not  take  the  constancy  of 


176  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

the  processes,  so  far  as  such  constancy  must  be  acknowledged, 
at  its  face  value  ? 

Constancy  and  change  are  both  facts  that  the  will  must  ac- 
knowledge in  the  process  of  experience.  There  is  the  relatively 
permanent  will,  the  invariable  associations;  and  there  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  shifting  of  contents  and  values,  the  new 
experiences,  the  unforeseen  obstacles,  the  pleasant  surprises. 
Why  not  take  experience  as  it  is?  But  this  is  not  human 
nature.  Our  tendency  is  to  emphasize  some  aspect  of  the  whole 
and  neglect  the  rest.  For  instance,  you  must  admit  that 
there  is  constancy  in  experience.  If  that  is  the  case,  one  argues 
there  must  be  absolute  constancy.  In  and  through  the  states, 
there  must  be  an  eternal  self,  a  transcendental  substance,  which 
remains  identical  in  all  the  states.  And  the  changes  themselves 
are  merely  accidents  of  this  eternal  substance  or  character. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  change.  Our  mental  facts 
come  and  go.  Very  well,  then  there  must  be  absolute  change. 
There  can  be  no  constancy  if  there  is  change.  Each  gross 
moment  is  really  divisible  into  infinitesimal  changes.  And 
everything  must  necessarily  flow  through  these  infinitesimal 
transitions.  There  is  only  appearance  of  qualities  or  tenden- 
cies, but  really  there  is  this  absolute  flux.  Does  the  attention 
vary?  Then  the  contents  attended  to  must  vary  also.  Do 
our  ideas  vary?  Then  our  will  attitudes  must  vary  too. 
Such  is  the  manner  of  reasoning  the  human  mind  from  age  to 
age  has  employed ;  and  new  editions  are  appearing  all  the  while. 
But  what  we  must  not  forget  is  that  the  conception  of  an  eternal 
self,  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  the  calculus  of  flux,  on  the  other, 
are  merely  tools  with  which  we  work.  Their  authority  in 
the  end  can  never  rise  above  the  facts  from  which  we  have 
derived  them.  The  contents  and  tendencies  may  overlap  our 
ideal  divisions.  All  we  can  say  is  that  in  the  history  of  the 
self  there  is  change  and  growth  and  novelty,  but  there  is  also 
some  constancy.  Else  we  would  not  even  be  talking  about  flux. 
There  would  be  no  memory  or  expectancy.  We  must  learn  to 
recognize  constancy  in  so  far  as  there  is  constancy,  and  flux 
in  so  far  as  there  is  flux. 

Just  why  there  should  be  such  a  mystery  about  the  con- 
tinuous occurrence  of  a  relatively  stable  context,  taking  ac- 


KNOWING  MINDS  177 

count  of  a  series  of  successive  feelings  or  perceptions,  it  is 
hard  to  see.  But  such  has  been  the  feeling  of  others  besides 
Mill:  ''Accepting  the  paradox  that  something  which  ex 
hypothesi  is  but  a  series  of  feelings  can  be  aware  of  itself  as 
a  series.  ...  I  think  by  far  the  wisest  thing  we  can  do  is  to 
accept  the  inexplicable  fact,  without  any  theory  how  it  takes 
place ;  and  when  we  are  obliged  to  speak  of  it  in  terms  which 
assume  a  theory  to  use  them  with  a  reservation  as  to  their 
meaning."  l  Yes,  perhaps.  But  would  it  not  be  wiser  still 
not  to  invent  such  an  absurd  paradox?  The  series  of  feelings 
does  not  as  a  series  know  itself,  but  is  known  as  such  by  a 
context  of  interest  which  is  for  the  purpose  stable.  And, 
again,  while  our  ability  to  control  the  series  of  feelings,  so  as 
to  keep  them  in  the  focus  of  attention,  may  be  circumscribed 
by  a  few  seconds,  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  the  in- 
terest in  controlling  them  is  so  limited.  The  dominant  tend- 
ency, the  ruling  passion,  may  be  lifelong.  To  measure  the  real 
permanency  of  the  self  by  the  flicker  of  attention,  whether  we 
have  recourse  to  the  infinitesimal  calculus  or  finite  fractions  of 
seconds  is  equally  mistaken.  The  real  specious  present  is  just 
as  long  as  the  associative  interest,  determining  the  series  of 
events,  whether  we  attend  to  such  interest  or  not.  The  time- 
span  of  the  self  and  the  time-span  of  attention  should  not  be 
confused.  As  a  matter  of  fact  while  attention  flickers  we  can 
bring  back  again  and  again  the  contents  and  will  attitudes. 

The  past  is  not  made  by  the  consciousness  of  it  any  more 
than  the  present.  You  might  just  as  well  say  that  the  geo- 
logical strata  originate  with  the  consciousness  of  them.  The 
past  has  its  own  context  and  its  own  content  as  much  as  the 
present.  The  past  comes  to  have  significance  for  the  present 
moment,  when  it  is  attended  to ;  but  its  own  meaning  does  not 
originate  then.  If  it  did,  there  would  be  no  possibility  of 
knowing  the  past,  because  there  would  be  no  past  to  know. 
The  context  of  the  past  must  somehow  persist  and  be  ac- 
knowledged by  the  present,  if  we  are  to  have  a  past.  Else 
there  could  be  no  memory.  Take  the  simplest  case  of  recog- 
nition, ideal  or  perceptual.  Part  of  the  past  content  must 
figure  as  a  content  in  the  present  context.  This  content  in 

1  J.  S.  Mill,  "Examination  of  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton,"  4th  ed.,  247  S. 


178  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

definite  recognition  reinstates  its  own  past  setting,  be  it  the 
sensory  context  of  the  perceptual  object  or  the  ideational 
setting,  which  is  acknowledged  by  the  present  context,  in- 
cluding the  dating.  There  may,  of  course,  be  all  degrees  of 
reinstatement,  and  so  of  vagueness  of  recognition,  but  in 
any  recognition  a  past  content  must  figure  as  the  identical 
content  in  the  present  context  together  with  its  own  tendencies. 
In  this  unraveling  of  the  past  context,  there  is  also  the  more  or 
less  vague  intuition  of  pastness,  due  to  the  growth  series  of 
which  the  contents  are  a  part.  Sometimes  an  identical  content 
plus  this  feeling  of  pastness  is  all  that  figures  in  the  present 
context,  and  we  have  the  confusion  of  feeling  that  we  have  been 
in  the  same  situation  before,  when  we  know  we  cannot  have 
been  there. 

In  purposive  realization,  we  have  a  similar  illustration  of 
constancy  with  reference  to  the  future.  If  ideals  could  not 
persist,  but  were  new  every  moment  and  in  each  infinitesimal 
fraction  of  a  moment,  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  the 
realization  of  an  end.  Experience  would  be  one  immediate 
slough  without  direction.  The  facts  of  experience,  however, 
show  that  we  can  keep  a  constant  nuclear  aim,  however  much 
the  context  of  our  meaning  may  grow  in  extent  and  definiteness 
in  the  process.  There  remains  an  identical  constellation  of 
content  through  it  all.  And  so  ideal  realization  is  possible. 

It  is  true  that  we  depend  very  much  upon  symbols  in  retaining 
the  past  and  in  fixing  the  present  and  the  future.  Knowing  our 
own  meaning,  past  and  present,  as  knowing  those  of  others,  is 
largely  an  interpretation  of  language.  But  language  after  all  is 
only  the  symbol  of  the  contents  of  experience.  Language  could 
not  convey  the  same  meaning,  unless  we  owned  the  meaning. 
We  can  recall  blue  sky  when  we  perceive  the  words,  because  we 
have  the  actual  meaning  blue  sky,  however  fragmentary  its 
concrete  content.  And  failing  this,  as  in  an  unknown  tongue, 
we  would  simply  have  words  staring  us  in  the  face,  conveying 
nothing.  Language,  moreover,  is  discrete  and  stereotyped 
and  fails  to  give  an  equivalent  for  the  quivering  transitions 
that  persist  indefinitely  within  the  systematic  meaning.  It 
is  not  fair  to  substitute  the  tool,  however  important,  for  the 
living  reality. 


KNOWING  MINDS  179 

But,  we  shall  be  told,  the  real  persistence  is  not  of  the  con- 
tents themselves  but  of  brain-processes.  We  have  elsewhere 
pointed  out  the  absurdity  of  supposing  that  our  mental  con- 
tents are  converted  into  atoms  and  molecules,  when  we  are 
not  attending  to  them  or  still  more  that  they  should  disappear 
into  nothingness  to  be  magically  recreated.  All  that  the 
brain  cells  can  do  is  what  the  phonograph  or  the  camera  or 
the  written  page  does  for  our  senses  —  furnish  a  record  of 
experience.  But  just  as  the  mind  must  furnish  the  real  content 
for  the  written  page  and  the  other  sense  records,  so  it  must 
furnish  the  content  for  the  brain  record.  The  brain  record  no 
more  makes  the  content  than  the  words  on  the  page.  And  if 
the  brain  record  means  a  constant  record  it  must  be  because  the 
content  is  recognized  as  the  same.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  owing 
to  the  uncertainty  of  the  brain  record,  we  substitute  largely 
the  ink  record  which  is  both  more  reliable  and  socially  more 
available.  Whenever,  then,  we  have  the  meaning  of  identity 
and  not  bare  physical  identity,  there  must  be  the  identical 
will.  Through  the  process  there  must  run  the  silver  thread  of 
persistent  tendency.  That  is  the  real  currency  of  which  the 
records  are  the  symbols.  That  we  are  immediately  aware 
of  the  brain  record  and  only  through  the  senses  conscious  of 
the  ink  record  does  not  alter  a  particle  the  significance  of  the 
records.  When  we  read  the  ink  records,  we  do  not  read  the 
retinal  fibers  or  light  rays;  we  interpret  them  as  symbols  of 
content,  just  as  much  as  though  they  were  written  on  our 
brain  by  the  law  of  habit. 

The  mental  energies  have  their  own  laws  of  spreading  and 
becoming  ineffective  as  shown  by  the  researches  of  Ebbing- 
haus.  Sometimes  our  associative  contexts  become  dissociated ; 
and,  when  they  do,  no  transcendental  ego  breaches  the  gap. 
Memory  and  recognition  operate  only  when  there  is  constancy 
within  the  referent  context.  The  other  contexts,  the  relata,  can 
suggest  neither  sameness  nor  novelty,  unless  there  is  such 
constancy  in  the  subject.  How  far  the  inefficiency  is  due  to 
records  can  be  ascertained  by  the  fact  that  when  an  objective 
record  is  present,  visual  or  oral,  the  contents  are  reinstated 
even  when  the  brain  record  is  ineffective.  This  fails  when  there 
is  real  dissociation  of  the  context  of  meaning. 


180  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

We  must,  finally,  remember  that  the  constancy  of  the  in- 
dividual meaning  is  determined  not  merely  by  the  individual 
himself,  but  by  his  social  context  of  relations,  which  reacts 
upon  his  own  consciousness  and  with  reference  to  which  con- 
stancy and  flux  alike  become  practically  significant.  This  social 
context  of  judgment  with  its  records  must  determine  how 
far  the  individual  feeling  of  identity  can  be  trusted.  The 
individual  meaning  sometimes  judges  itself  to  be  constant, 
when  the  social  verdict  is  otherwise.  And  identity  has  signifi- 
cance primarily  as  a  social  category. 

VI 

The  unity  of  the  self  is  a  question  distinct  from  the  subject- 
object  relation.  Whether  the  self  functions  as  whole  or  part, 
there  is,  whenever  it  is  awake,  the  focal  and  marginal  field, 
the  active  context,  and  the  selected  content.  This  is  true  even 
where  there  is  complete  dissociation  of  associative  systems. 
Leone  II,  when  awake,  has  just  as  much  the  I-me  character 
as  Leone  I,  however  distinct  they  may  be  as  regards  associa- 
tions, temperament,  and  character.  To  what  extent,  then,  the 
experiences  of  one  organism  hang  together  must  be  treated  as 
a  problem  by  itself. 

The  self  has  as  much  or  as  little  unity  as  we  must  recognize. 
We  must  take  unity  precisely  as  we  are  accustomed  to  take 
difference  —  at  its  face  value.  And  here  again  no  a  priori 
assumptions  will  either  increase  or  diminish  the  unity  which 
we  find  in  the  actual  processes.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  tran- 
scendental ego  or  soul,  or  any  other  additional  entity,  spiritual 
or  material,  simply  becomes  one  fact  more  to  be  related  to 
the  rest ;  and  if  we  dogmatically  deny  unity  to  the  facts  them- 
selves and  treat  them  as  purely  unique  and  disparate,  no 
external  linkage  will  serve  as  cement  to  bind  the  hypothetical 
differences  together,  not  even  in  an  infinite  series.  The 
processes  cannot  be  unified  by  being  "in  something"  external 
to  themselves,  material  or  spiritual.  They  must  possess 
their  own  linkage. 

The  dogma  that  each  state  of  consciousness  is  unique  and 
indecomposable  is  as  indefensible  as  that  of  a  transcendental 
knower  relating  disparate  facts.  There  could  be  no  judg- 


KNOWING   MINDS  181 

ments  in  an  experience  where  the  facts  are  so  intimately  blended 
that  the  experience  could  only  be  taken  as  a  whole.  All  our 
thinking  depends  upon  our  ability  to  analyze  out  identical 
qualities  or  relations  and  to  pass  from  one  context  to  another 
on  the  basis  of  such  abstraction,  dealing  with  the  contexts 
only  so  far  as  the  identical  predicate  pertains.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  actual  experience  shows  that  we  can  take  objects  and  quali- 
ties now  in  one  context,  now  in  another,  without  altering  the 
object  by  thus  subjectively  taking  it.  The  content  yellow  when 
transferred  from  the  marginal  to  the  focal  field  of  attention  is 
not  altered  in  quality,  whatever  may  be  the  difference  of  moving 
it  from  the  marginal  to  the  focal  field  of  vision.  We  can  know 
the  past,  we  have  seen,  and  we  can  prepare  for  the  future,  be- 
cause we  can  take  the  contents  and  their  contexts  over  again 
without  altering  their  own  meaning  or  reality  in  so  taking  them, 
however  much  their  significance  for  the  cognitive  contexts  may 
be  altered.  The  dogma  of  the  uniqueness  of  each  state  of 
consciousness  as  such  contradicts  all  our  procedure  and  would 
make  not  only  the  science  of  psychology  but  any  science  im- 
possible, for  all  science  presupposes  the  possibility  of  taking 
facts  over  again  in  experience. 

There  are  doubtless  unities  in  experience  which  fulfill  a  unique 
purpose  and  which  as  individual  unities  cannot  be  exchanged 
for  other  unities.  But  why,  therefore,  give  our  entire  expe- 
rience this  character  ?  And  even  when  a  whole  has  uniqueness, 
it  does  not  follow  that  the  elements  cannot  be  analyzed  and 
taken  over  again  indefinitely.  Unique  as  the  Angelus  is  as 
a  painting,  the  elements  of  color,  perspective,  and  form  can  be 
analyzed  out  and  can  figure  in  any  number  of  contexts.  The 
composition  is  not  unique  in  its  elements,  but  in  the  will,  which 
they  express  through  their  correlation  and  which  furnishes  a 
specific  satisfaction  to  the  appreciating  subject. 

Absolute  uniqueness,  like  the  absolute  ego,  is  a  dogma  un- 
supported by  facts.  Why  make  knowledge  impossible  by 
assumptions?  If  experience  came  merely  by  unique  throbs, 
prediction  and  knowledge  would  be  impossible.  If  it  consisted 
of  wholly  diverse  contents,  knowledge  would  likewise  be  im- 
possible. But  to  some  extent  we  can  have  prediction,  we  can 
pass  from  fact  to  fact  by  means  of  identities  in  the  stream  of 


182  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

processes.  Let  us  take  as  distinct  what  experience  makes  dis- 
tinct, and  what  experience  joins  together  let  no  man's  assump- 
tions put  asunder. 

If  we  insist  on  abstracting  from  the  processes  of  experience 
altogether  —  from  its  active  context  and  its  selected  datum  — 
in  order  to  discover  something  which  is  not  process  at  all 
but  which  is  superadded  to  the  activity  of  the  self,  we  get 
not  a  transcendental  ego  or  any  other  common  entity  outside 
of  the  process,  we  get  the  fact  of  consciousness  in  the  abstract 
which  accompanies  all  our  apperception.  This  is  not  a 
spectator.  The  spectator  of  experience  must  be  the  apper- 
ceptive  context.  It  is  merely  the  condition  of  awareness  at 
all.  It  is  quite  colorless.  It  is  responsible  for  neither  diver- 
sity nor  unity.  It  holds  together  as  little  as  it  separates. 
It  simply  makes  the  facts  apparent.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
give  consciousness  an  individual  existence  for  each  knower 
as  is  done  with  Purusha  in  the  Sankyah  system.  The  in- 
dividuality belongs  to  the  processes  themselves,  in  their 
phylogenetic  and  ontogenetic  history.  Consciousness  taken 
as  an  abstraction  is  homogeneous. 

Sometimes  we  must  recognize  the  self  as  partial.  It  may 
be  a  case  of  impulsive  control  where  the  total  context  of  tend- 
ency fails  to  express  itself.  We  then  speak  of  ourselves  in 
retrospect  as  not  being  ourselves.  It  may  be  a  dissociation 
of  memory,  which  makes  us  fail  to  connect  with  the  past 
and  so  carry  out  our  obligations  and  satisfy  expectations. 
It  may  be  organic  disorder  which  makes  one  part  of  the  con- 
tents, previously  linked  with  the  self-contents,  seem  foreign 
altogether,  with  altogether  strange  properties.  It  may  be  a 
case  of  more  profound  dissociations,  where  dirempted  systems 
of  association,  each  with  its  own  characteristic  tendencies, 
simultaneously  or  alternately  struggle  for  the  mastery.  In 
all  of  these  cases  the  contents  thus  dissociated  may  come  to 
figure  again,  after  restored  equilibrium,  in  a  total  context  with 
its  characteristic  consciousness  of  identity.  But,  in  any  case, 
we  must  accept  the  actual  association  or  dissociation  as  it  is. 

Even  when  the  facts  hang  together,  they  do  not  hang  to- 
gether in  the  same  way.  There  are  different  grades  of  unity. 
This  has  not  always  been  recognized.  Because  some  facts 


KNOWING   MINDS  183 

hang  together  systematically  as  parts  of  a  purpose,  it  has 
been  argued  that  the  self  is  fundamentally  a  thinking  or  rational 
self  and  that  all  mental  activity  is  implicitly  or  explicitly  of 
the  judgment  type.  The  realization  of  an  ideal  self,  then, 
becomes  a  case,  not  of  empirically  selecting  and  composing  a 
unity  in  obedience  to  a  purpose,  but  of  becoming  conscious  of 
an  eternal  self  already  constituted  and  implicit  in  our  simplest 
mental  acts. 

Again,  because  some  facts  apparently  hang  together  in  our 
attention  moment  only  externally,  in  space  and  time,  with 
no  seeming  internal  bond,  but  are  simply  interlinked  by  con- 
tiguity within  the  field  of  interest,  it  has  been  argued  that 
habit  or  contiguity  is  the  only  real  linkage  of  our  mental 
facts,  with  similarity  given  perhaps  a  more  or  less  vague  secon- 
dary place.  Or,  perhaps,  the  opposite :  since  similarity  of 
content  is  sometimes  found  to  be  the  seeming  linkage,  contig- 
uity is  made  a  case  of  similarity,  if  the  two  are  not  simply  held 
out  as  irreducible  laws.  This  external  linkage,  moreover,  has 
generally  been  credited,  not  to  the  side  of  mental  processes, 
but  to  the  account  of  brain  processes.  Our  ignorance  of  brain 
dynamics  and  the  paradox  of  cementing  feelings  and  ideas  by 
means  of  atoms  and  molecules  and  their  habits  has  not  dis- 
comfited physiological  psychology. 

Now  here  again  we  must  take  connections  at  their  face 
value.  In  part,  evidently,  the  facts  of  mind  hang  together 
as  members  of  a  system.  They  cohere  and  are  controlled  by 
an  identical  purpose  —  utilitarian,  logical,  aesthetic,  ethical, 
or  religious.  It  may  be  the  idea  of  wealth;  it  may  be  the 
pursuit  and  creation  of  beauty ;  it  may  be  the  love  for  truth ; 
it  may  be  the  passion  for  righteousness;  it  may  be  the  imi- 
tation of  Christ.  The  ideal  self  is  no  doubt  the  self  unified 
within  a  comprehensive  purpose,  where  all  claims  are  adjusted, 
all  facts  seen  in  systematic  relation.  But  for  us  finites  this 
unified  self  is  largely  an  aim  and  only  in  part  fact. 

The  linkage  sometimes  is  the  consciousness  of  a  common 
quality  or  relation  by  means  of  which  the  otherwise  seemingly 
heterogeneous  facts  or  contexts  hang  together.  Thus  con- 
sciousness of  a  common  quality  may  bring  together  processes 
which  have  never  been  experienced  together  and  so  is  quite 


184  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

a  distinct  and  elementary  fact.  In  every  case  of  recognition, 
however  rudimentary,  this  consciousness  of  the  partial  identity 
of  traits  of  one  individual  or  context  with  another  is  present. 
This,  in  the  case  of  the  judgment  of  analogy  —  the  building 
of  expectancies  upon  identical  traits  —  forms  the  transition 
to  the  reading  of  facts  by  internal  connections  rather  than 
by  adventitious.  That  one  individual  or  setting  is  merely 
like  another  is  an  adventitious  relation.  It  is  when  the 
identity  links  them  in  a  system  of  prediction,  that  we  have 
science. 

The  loosest  or  most  adventitious  bond  is  that  of  habit, 
the  contiguous  interest  in  facts  merely  happening  together 
in  space  or  time.  The  overlapping  part  of  one  context  tends 
to  reinstate  its  other  context  or  one  of  its  other  contexts  in 
accordance  with  the  strength  of  the  habit  so  established  and 
the  dominant  set  at  the  time.  The  set  of  active  tendency  acts 
like  a  switch  system,  making  some  habits  effective  and  others 
ineffective  for  the  specific  purpose. 

Whether  the  linkage  be  through  a  systematic  purpose  or 
through  similars  or  through  habit,  in  any  case  the  linkage 
is  due  to  the  consciousness  of  identity  in  the  variety  of  facts 
and  contexts.  There  must  be  at  least  the  bond  of  unitary 
interest,  whatever  may  be  their  own  linkage  of  the  facts  them- 
selves—  the  identity  of  the  context  which  takes  account  of 
the  facts,  fleeting  and  heterogeneous  as  these  facts  may  be. 
While  a  great  deal  of  our  mental  life  is  held  together  by  such 
contiguous  interest,  we  must  not  forget  that  it  is  precisely  in 
the  mental  world  that  we  can  follow  the  transitions  from  fact 
to  fact  and  have  the  immediate  consciousness  of  their  string 
of  identity,  i.e.  wherever  we  have  purposive  unity.  Outside 
of  what  appears  to  be  mind  we  must  be  satisfied  to  piece  out 
the  transitions  conceptually  and  inferentially.  We  cannot 
follow  immediately  the  transitions  of  the  facts.  It  is  a  mis- 
take to  ignore  these  internal  transitions  of  the  mind  and  to 
strive,  as  modern  psychology  has  done,  to  reduce  the  relations 
of  mind  to  the  adventitious  and  external  kind.  Purposive 
unity  must  be  recognized  together  with  passive  association 
by  similars  and  by  contiguity  as  an  actual  type,  as  well  as  an 
ultimate  ideal,  of  mental  connection. 


KNOWING   MINDS  185 

VII 

What  becomes  of  activity  and  freedom,  if  we  once  admit 
that  the  stream  of  tendency  is  the  agent?  No  theory  can 
unmake  the  facts  and  such  activity  or  freedom  as  there  is 
still  remains.  It  is  hard  to  see  of  what  use  a  transcendental 
knower  or  any  spiritual  something  could  be  in  accounting 
for  activity  or  any  other  function  of  the  self,  as  it  must 
necessarily  be  the  same  whether  the  self  is  active  or  passive. 
Activity,  as  contrasted  with  passive  and  non-voluntary 
states,  would  still  have  to  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  concrete 
processes,  though  somehow  it  is  hard  to  rid  ourselves  of  the 
feeling  that  the  idea  of  an  extra  entity,  added  to  the  facts, 
affords  an  additional  guaranty  of  identity,  unity,  and  freedom. 

Activity  has  sometimes  been  identified  with  the  unpre- 
dictable and  novel.  The  world  of  psychic  reality,  it  is  rightly 
pointed  out,  is  not  exhausted  in  our  concepts.  It  is  not  all 
included  in  our  present  logical  context  of  meaning.  One 
characteristic  fact  about  the  stream  of  consciousness  is  its 
ever  novel  situations  and  novel  attitudes.  You  cannot  except 
partially  predict  the  future.  But  however  true  this  may  be, 
as  stating  our  finite  experience,  and  however  much  we  may 
recognize  the  truly  temporal  aspect  of  life,  it  does  not  seem 
possible  to  define  activity  in  such  terms.  For  change  and 
novelty  exist  apart  from  our  activity.  They  confront  us 
whether  we  are  active  or  passive,  awake  or  asleep.  They 
may  come  to  thwart  our  purposes  as  well  as  come  as  the  fruits 
of  our  efforts.  I  do  not  see,  therefore,  how  we  can  define 
activity  or  freedom  in  terms  of  novelty. 

Activity  and  freedom  must  mean  the  realization  of  an  aim. 
And  we  cannot  aim  at  the  unpredictable.  We  can  only  wait 
for  it  and  let  it  happen  as  it  may.  Activity  on  the  contrary 
means  the  control  of  events  —  ideas,  feelings,  perceptions, 
impulses  —  by  an  idea  which  remains  constant.  It  is  just  this 
conscious  leading  that  we,  in  our  awake  moments,  mean  by 
the  self.  That  the  novel  and  unforeseen  happen  is  incidental 
to  the  activity  and  may  be  forced  upon  us  quite  independently 
of  our  being  active ;  though  a  general  readiness  even  here  is 
the  thing,  in  turning  the  novel  to  our  advantage  when  it  comes. 


'186  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Activity  means  that  the  consequences  follow  from  our  intention, 
not  contrary  to  our  intention. 

Activity,  therefore,  is  the  very  opposite  of  chance,  which 
means  the  unpredictable  and  uncontrollable.  Fluent  our 
world  must  be  to  some  extent  to  have  expectancy,  to  look 
to  the  future;  and  with  the  fluency  there  may  be  novelty. 
Perhaps  there  always  is.  But  freedom  relates  to  making 
real  the  ideal  content,  to  regulating  the  flow  in  accordance  with 
the  dominating  purpose.  Only  when  the  idea  can  recognize 
the  results  as  its  own  fulfillment,  however  much  more  definite 
and  concrete,  do  we  have  freedom.  Whether  the  flow  in 
such  a  case  is  determined  altogether  by  "  considerations,"  or 
whether  it  is  to  some  extent  independently  variable,  does  not 
concern  the  question  of  freedom,  since  we  are  free  only  in  so  far 
as  the  flow  is  controlled  by  the  purpose,  is  organized  into  some 
ideal  scheme  of  life.  The  novelty,  as  we  finites  can  take  ac- 
count of  it,  is  necessarily  an  afterthought,  a  gift  of  the  process, 
and  by  hypothesis  it  is  not  anything  we  can  theorize  about. 
It  is  a  character  of  the  concrete  flow,  as  contrasted  with  the 
expectant  and  guiding  idea.  Whether  it  is  absolute  novelty 
or  due  to  the  peculiar  limitations  of  our  experience  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  know.  Some  of  it  is  evidently  due  to  the  limitations 
of  our  finite  consciousness,  where  we  often  discover  that  what 
is  novel  to  us  as  individuals  or  even  as  an  age  is  already  part 
of  the  content  of  historic  humanity.  The  novelty  of  the 
child,  to  whom  all  is  novel,  is  merely  its  taking  over  of  the 
content  of  the  race,  in  terms  of  its  own  specific  organization. 
But  while  novelty  abounds  in  the  infant's  life,  there  is  no 
freedom.  Conduct  is  free  only  when  it  is  a  consequence  of  a 
systematic  purpose.  We  do  not  call  a  man  free  in  so  far  as  he 
must  say  of  the  outcome  of  his  conduct :  "That  is  not  what  I 
meant"  or  "I  had  not  thought  of  that." 

There  has  been  a  tendency  of  late  to  minimize  the  impor- 
tance of  the  focal  factor  in  attention.  A  new  light  has  been 
thrown  upon  the  complexity  of  our  mental  life  by  such  researches 
as  those  of  the  Freudian  school.  More  emphasis  is  being  placed 
upon  the  dimly  conscious  or  even  unconscious  impulsive  back- 
ground than  upon  the  intellectual  constellations  which  occupy 
the  foreground  of  our  conscious  field.  The  real  motive  springs 


KNOWING   MINDS  187 

must  be  sought,  it  is  held,  in  the  deeper  impulsive  strata,  rather 
than  in  the  shuffling  of  ideas.  It  is  this  impulsive  background 
which  furnishes  the  real  determinants  of  interest  and  conduct. 
Sudden  crises  in  our  emotional  and  volitional  life  have  been 
explained  by  the  subconscious  incubation  of  tendencies  which 
gather  strength,  often  unbeknown  to  the  habitual  stratum 
of  consciousness,  until,  sometimes  under  some  special  stress, 
sometimes  by  their  own  cumulative  energy,  they  break  through 
the  crust  and  establish  a  new  center  of  emotion  and  volition.1 
In  such  cases,  self-surrender,  rather  than  ideational  control, 
seems  to  be  the  secret  of  the  establishing  of  a  new  equilibrium, 
with  its  characteristic  consequences  of  value  and  conduct. 
Needless  to  say,  the  new  level  of  interest  may  mean  retrogres- 
sion as  well  as  progress,  counterconversion  rather  than  conver- 
sion, from  the  point  of  view  of  socially  established  ideals.  In 
either  case,  the  change  shows  that  there  are  more  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  than  are  dreamt  of  in  man's  intellectualistic 
philosophy.  Valuable  light  has  been  thrown,  in  many  cases, 
upon  socially  pathological  emotions  and  conduct,  as  well  as 
physical  disorders,  by  psycho-analysis  through  its  unearthing 
of  balked  dispositions.  It  is  true  that  the  Freudian  School 
has  placed  a  one-sided  emphasis  upon  sex  dispositions  both  in 
explaining  pathological  and  normal  behavior.  Other  primitive 
impulses,  such  as  self-seeking,  fear,  anger,  etc.,  are  equally 
original,  if  not  equally  pervasive,  and  must  be  taken  account 
of  both  in  their  normal  and  pathological  aspects.  The  ideal 
tendencies,  too,  as  shown  in  religious  conversion  may  be  the 
balked  dispositions.  But  in  any  case,  the  new  exploration  of 
the  subconscious  has  disclosed  the  limitations  of  the  intellec- 
tualist  psychology  of  mechanical  associationism. 

Without  minimizing  the  importance  of  the  discovery  of 
dissociations  in  the  strata  of  our  psychic  life,  it  is  true  neverthe- 
less that,  in  the  stream  of  the  self  as  known  to  most  of  us,  there 
is  an  interlinking  of  dispositions  in  our  waking  experience. 
The  subconscious  is  here  the  more  which  furnishes  the  basis 
of  movement  and  interest  in  a  one-story  structure,  more  or  less 
loosely  organized.  Here,  too,  what  we  are  distinctly  conscious 
of  in  the  way  of  snatches  of  ideas,  perceptions,  and  feelings 

1  See  James,  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  Chapters  VIII,  IX  and  X. 


188  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

floats  on  the  larger  stream  of  the  subconscious  life  with  its 
associative  and  impulsive  tendencies.  But  though  the  con- 
scious part  may  be  only  a  tenth  or  hundredth  part  of  the  total 
stream,  it  is  nevertheless  important  in  the  steering.  Work  of 
moment  does  not  get  done,  unless  there  is  the  attention  to 
plans  and  ideals.  Valuable  results  come  to  us  from  the  sub- 
conscious only  when  there  has  been  a  previous  set  established 
by  conscious  effort.  Most  of  us  are  not  saved  from  uselessness 
and  chaos  by  self-surrender,  but  rather  by  active  attention 
which  makes  certain  tendencies  focal  and  meaningful  until 
our  life  becomes  fairly  thoroughly  organized  in  terms  of  such 
ideals.  Activity  and  freedom  still  continue  to  mean  the 
steering  and  control  of  the  multitudinous  impressions  and  im- 
pulses by  means  of  purposes,  fragmentary  though  our  conscious- 
ness of  their  implications  may  be. 

VIII 

Finally,  the  dynamic  theory  of  the  self  explains  the  value 
and  worth  of  conduct  in  so  far  as  it  possesses  those  characters. 
Any  abstract  entity  added  to  the  processes  would  as  little 
account  for  the  presence  as  the  absence  of  value  in  any  specific 
process.  Value  is  a  function  of  activity.  Objects  have  value 
when  they  satisfy  some  tendency  of  the  self,  in  its  various 
stages  of  complexity  and  equilibrium.  As  every  satisfaction 
of  the  will  is  a  value,  we  must  distinguish  between  value  and 
worth  —  subjective  value  and  objective  value.  Whether 
activity  has  worth  or  not  does  not  depend  upon  its  individual 
satisfaction,  but  upon  its  agreement  with  a  standard  which  the 
will  must  acknowledge.  It  may  be  the  standard  of  social 
agreement ;  and  this  at  any  rate  is  enforced  upon  the  individual 
will,  whether  accepted  by  it  or  not.  But  as  this  also  is  vari- 
able, our  finite  activity,  in  order  to  have  worth,  must  refer 
to  a  standard  which  the  social  will,  too,  must  accept  in  its 
racial  development.  The  meaning  of  this  we  can  only  catch 
gradually,  and  every  such  advance  in  meaning  must  come 
from  individual  insight. 

As  the  agreement  of  activity  with  an  objective  standard  is 
worth,  so,  if  there  is  an  ultimate  and  eternal  standard,  agree- 
ment with  this  standard  means  immortality.  As  society 


KNOWING  MINDS  189 

conserves  the  unities  which  harmonize  with  its  standards,  and 
makes  the  poem,  institution,  or  individual  that  expresses  its 
will  immortal,  in  so  far  as  in  it  lies,  so,  if  there  is  an  ultimate 
standard  and  a  will  to  enforce  it,  this  will  must  intend  the 
immortality  of  that  which  realizes  the  standard,  be  the  unity 
personal  or  impersonal.  The  worthless  unities  could  not, 
in  such  a  world,  survive  as  individual  unities,  they  could  only 
survive  as  contents  or  tendencies  to  be  used  as  raw  material  for 
more  comprehensive  unities,  as  the  button  molder  in  Ibsen's 
"  Peer  Gynt "  melts  up  the  sham  individuals  in  his  ladle. 

Since  so  much  of  what  enters  into  our  mental  processes, 
both  in  the  way  of  content  and  in  the  way  of  associative  mech- 
anism, is  physical,  it  is  a  question  whether  such  elements  and 
contexts  can  survive  the  shock  of  bodily  decay.  The  real 
continuity  of  mind  may  have  to  be  thought  of  purely  in  terms 
of  the  will  —  its  continuity  as  an  energetic  complex,  with  its 
stored-up  effects  and  its  organized  character.  This  concep- 
tion of  continuity  is  that  emphasized  by  the  Buddhist  conception 
of  Karma.  Thus  to  conserve  the  moral  results  would  indeed 
make  immortality  a  practical  reality.  Ideational  memory 
and  association  may  well  be  looked  upon  as  machinery,  exist- 
ing for  the  time  owing  to  the  mind's  conjunction  with  a  physical 
body  and  valuable  as  instruments  in  the  development  of  the 
will,  in  order  to  make  effective  its  capacities  for  docility  and 
refinement.  If  we  limit  memory  to  "organic  memory," 
to  the  retention  of  motor  results  which  can  guide  the  future 
process  of  development,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  will  should 
not  be  accorded  memory.  Such  memory  must  indeed  be  at- 
tributed to  the  hereditary  stream  of  cells  which  condition  the 
unfolding  of  every  complex  life  history. 

We  may  thus  look  upon  the  coarser  or  finer  qualities,  native 
to  the  minds  of  human  beings  as  we  know  them,  as  the  result 
of  such  immortality  on  the  part  of  the  will  looking  backward, 
though  conceived  perhaps  in  racial  rather  than  individual 
terms.  To  have  this  greater  capacity  for  truth,  for  beauty, 
for  uprightness,  and  for  friendship  would  indeed  seem  an  im- 
mortality well  worth  while.  It  marks  the  quality  of  wills  now 
and  may  so  continue  forever  to  mark  their  quality  with  ever 
greater  possibilities. 


190  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Of  course  the  persistence  of  an  individual  will  would  mean, 
not  merely  the  persistence  of  conative  tendencies,  but  the 
persistence  of  a  certain  organization,  a  certain  form  quality 
of  the  whole  which  marks  a  unique  personality,  as  it  marks  the 
unique  harmony  in  music.  Such  organization  of  character 
shows  a  remarkable  durability  in  our  present  life  history,  and 
does  not  seem  to  be  dependent  upon  the  changes  of  the  physical 
organism. 

Even  in  the  case  of  the  physical  content  and  its  habitual 
associations,  it  is,  of  course,  possible  that  these  may  be  so  inti- 
mately woven  into  the  character  and  unity  of  the  will  that  they 
can  exist  independently  of  their  particular  physical  conditions. 
Like  a  diamond  set  in  gold  they  may  persist  inlaid  in  our  in- 
terests. This  is  more  difficult  to  conceive,  though  our  faith 
here  in  bare  possibilities  may  be  aided  by  direct  results  from 
the  despised  science  of  psychic  research.  Nothing  indubitable 
would  seem  to  have  been  arrived  at  up  to  date,  though  some 
distinguished  investigators  feel  otherwise.  Further  research 
may  here,  as  in  other  fields,  bring  greater  agreement. 

At  any  rate  such  conceptual  dissociation  of  mental  energy 
from  its  temporary  physical  conditions,  will  give  faith  a  freer 
play  to  construct  its  belief  world  as  may  be  consistent  with  our 
hopes  and  happiness.  Where  we  know  so  little,  it  is  important 
that  our  conceptions  should  not  trip  up  or  block  some  of  those 
deeper  yearnings  of  humanity,  which  certainly  have  tremendous 
social  and  race  significance,  however  incapable  they  may  be 
of  scientific  proof.  The  craving  for  immortality  remains  at 
any  rate  one  of  the  most  stubborn  and  perennial  demands  of 
the  will.  As  the  will  becomes  conscious  of  its  reality  and  dig- 
nity, it  naturally  becomes  solicitous  to  shape  a  conception  of 
the  world  which  shall  furnish  a  congenial  climate  to  its  brief 
conscious  awakening  in  the  time  process. 


CHAPTER  XI 

INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  MINDS  l 

WE  have  spoken  so  far  of  mind  as  though  it  were  made  up 
of  individual  streams,  in  more  or  less  abstract  isolation  from 
each  other,  each  bound  up  with  its  own  organism.  We  have 
become  accustomed,  thanks  to  the  sharp  abstractions  of  science, 
to  look  upon  mind  as  subcranial.  We  cannot,  however,  in  my 
opinion  solve  this  difficulty  of  abstract  isolation  by  getting  rid 
of  mind  altogether  and  by  substituting  for  it  organic  reactions. 
Mental  behavior  is  not  mere  physiological  behavior ;  and  add- 
ing the  quote  of  interested  organic  behavior  merely  introduces 
the  problem  of  mind  through  the  back  door.  For  we  must 
still  define  interest.  This  is  no  mere  neutral  light  as  we  have 
seen,  but  an  energetic  reaction  between  the  will  and  a  stimulus. 
The  stimulus  may  be  physico-organic ;  it  may  be  internal  to  the 
will's  own  rhythm ;  but  it  may  also  be  another  will.  It  is  the 
relation  in  the  latter  case  with  which  we  are  concerned  here. 

In  assuming,  as  psychologists  have  done  in  the  past,  the 
isolation  of  minds,  the  relations  between  minds  have  necessarily 
been  regarded  as  external  relations.  The  continuities  between 
minds  have  been  assumed  to  be  physical  continuities,  unless  in 
some  "  spooky "  instances  of  telepathy.  We  become  conscious 
of  other  minds,  it  is  supposed,  only  through  analogy  from  physio- 
logical conduct,  i.e.  we  represent  to  ourselves  that  other  people 
have  minds  from  the  similarity  of  their  bodily  behavior  to  our 
own,  assuming,  of  course,  that  we  have  knowledge  of  our 
own  minds  from  the  start.  By  imitating  other  people's  be- 
havior, including  in  later  development  their  words  as  well  as 
their  instinctive  sounds  and  gestures,  we  learn  to  translate 
more  fully  the  hidden  mind  of  the  other  egos  into  terms  of  our 

1  For  a  fuller  treatment  of  the  social  mind,  see  the  author's  articles  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Sociology,  1913,  1914,  1915. 

191 


192  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

own  and  so  to  share  to  some  extent  a  common  world.  What 
is  thus  directly  shared  and  common  to  minds  is  the  physical 
world.  With  this  each  of  us  has  immediate  continuity.  This 
distinction  between  mental  and  physical,  modern  psychology 
has  crystallized  into  the  formula  that  physical  facts  are  those 
which  are  objects  to  several  observers  while  mental  facts  are 
objects  to  one  observer  only.  The  former  furnishes,  there- 
fore, the  world  of  description,  the  latter  is  only  accessible  to 
private  intuition.1 

Why  this  precedence  should  be  given  to  physical  continuities 
is  not  easy  to  understand  from  the  point  of  view  of  logic,  though 
natural  enough  from  the  point  of  view  of  custom.  The  material 
world  has  been  too  much  with  us.  Early  and  late,  through  a 
long  survival  struggle  with  the  sense  environment,  we  have 
been  directly  dependent  upon  it  for  our  immediate  wants, 
while  conscious  cooperation  with  our  fellows  and  the  treatment 
of  them  as  anything  more  than  things  —  breathing  bodies  —  is 
comparatively  late  and  not  over-widespread  now.  In  the 
lowest  animals,  mind  seems  entirely  enslaved  to  the  organism 
and  its  needs.  Blind  impulse  and  habit  seem  here  indeed  a 
part  merely  of  organic  behavior.  In  the  higher  animals  the 
free  association  of  ideas,  the  division  of  labor  and  cooperation 
for  common  ends  help  to  liberate  mind  from  this  instrumental 
relation  to  the  body  until  in  civilized  man,  with  his  power  of 
abstract  thought,  the  relation  is  reversed.  Body  comes  to  be 
the  instrument  of  mind,  and  the  individual's  world  of  ends 
comes  to  be  found  more  and  more  in  social  companionship,  in 
the  mutual  cooperation  and  appreciation  of  his  fellows.  This 
common  bond  comes  to  be  looked  upon  more  and  more,  not  as 
a  mere  artificial  contract  but  as  the  fufillment  of  spontaneous 
and  fundamental  needs.  A  world  of  spiritual  relationships 
thus  arises  where  the  individual  lives  and  moves  and  has  his 
being,  and,  compared  to  this,  the  solid  physical  world,  through 
the  progress  of  science,  comes  to  seem  more  and  more  a  plastic 
means. 

This  mastery,  however,  is  made  possible  only  by  means  of 
abstract  thought;  and  abstract  thought,  indispensable  as  it 

1  This  contrast  has  been  most  clearly  emphasized  by  Professor  Miinsterberg 
in  his  "Grundziige  zur  Psychologie." 


INDIVIDUAL  AND    SOCIAL  MINDS  193 

is  to  this  process  of  liberation,  carries  its  own  penalty.  It 
tends  to  make  us  insensible  to  the  immediate  continuities  of 
life.  It  cuts  the  world  up  into  abstract  elements.  It  atomizes 
its  integral  situations  for  descriptive  purposes,  and  then  un- 
consciously substitutes  the  instrument  for  the  concrete  inter- 
relations of  the  real  world.  Thus  conceptual  thought,  the 
most  efficient  of  social  institutions,  kills  the  sense  of  social  con- 
tinuity and  reduces  mind  to  a  mere  abstraction.  Its  relation 
to  its  world  becomes  a  mere  external  relation,  at  the  same  time 
that  the  objective  world  is  itself  broken  up  into  abstractions 
and  external  relations.  Incidentally,  thought,  when  thus  cut 
loose  from  those  concrete  purposes  of  experience  for  which  it 
is  to  furnish  the  leading,  makes  itself  impossible  and  absurd. 
A  world  made  up  of  abstractions  is  no  longer  conceivable ;  and 
so  thought  in  despair  comes  to  discredit  itself  and  to  seek  solace 
in  mysticism. 

It  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  human  development  that  con- 
ceptual thought,  the  social  instrument  by  which  mind  dominates 
matter  and  secures  efficient  cooperation  of  mind  with  mind, 
should  thus  in  theory  have  come  to  isolate  mind  in  the  universe, 
if  indeed  not  to  make  it  a  mere  function  of  matter.  But  this  is 
not  all.  Thought  has  similarly  emphasized  its  abstract  sub- 
stantives in  our  social  relations  and  made  us  correspondingly 
forgetful  of  that  sense  of  immediate  companionship  of  mind 
with  mind  which  furnishes  the  propelling  motive  of  social 
cooperation,  including  abstract  thought.  Not  that  thought 
has  destroyed  the  sense  of  companionship.  Constructive 
imagination  does  not  make  men  selfish,  as  some  suppose.  By 
liberating  mind  from  the  immediate  sense  world,  it  has  vastly 
enhanced  both  the  need  and  the  reality  of  spiritual  association. 
It  has  made  possible  the  relationship  of  friendship,  the  freest 
and  most  precious  of  social  communions  where  man  rises 
above,  not  merely  the  slavery  to  animal  want,  but  traditional 
bondage  as  well,  and  where  soul  meets  soul  on  the  basis  of 
lasting  ideal  kinship.  There  are  compensations.  But  the 
atomism  of  our  thinking  is  both  effect  and  cause  in  the  realm  of 
practice.  While  originally  the  effect  of  the  narrowness  of  our 
human  interests,  it  in  turn  crystallizes  and  tends  to  justify 
and  perpetuate  our  social  atomism.  This  defect  can  be  cured 


194  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

only  by  a  deeper  thoughtfulness,  when  thought  recognizes  its 
instrumental  character  and  examines  its  deeper,  though  often 
unconscious,  motives. 

Perhaps  Bergson  is  right  that  the  higher  insects  with  their 
concrete  intuitive  life  and  their  lack  of  abstract  thought  are 
more  keenly  conscious  of  the  real  continuities  than  we  are. 
But  at  any  rate  they  don't  know  it  if  they  are,  while  we  can 
with  an  effort  at  least  call  back  thought  to  its  original  task  of 
making  clear  and  distinct  our  concrete  intuitions. 

We  thus,  in  the  process  of  experience,  literally  differentiate 
ourselves  out  of  a  social  continuum.  In  this  process  of  differ- 
entiation, in  this  growing  recognition  of  each  other's  reality,  the 
combative  instincts  play  the  most  important  role.  We  are 
no  sooner  brought  together  by  the  irresistible  pull  of  gregarious- 
ness  than  we  like  children  fight  to  possess  the  same  things; 
perhaps  we  fight  for  physical  things,  perhaps  for  the  mastery 
of  the  social  situation,  perhaps  to  emulate  each  other  in  a  self- 
imposed  task.  And  in  the  fight  we  discover  the  mutual  reality 
of  wills  and  our  relative  place  in  the  scale  of  valuation.  The 
sense  of  companionship  in  the  meantime  which  pulls  us  to- 
gether and  holds  us  together  in  spite  of  the  conflict,  and  even 
makes  us  enjoy  the  conflict,  is  in  the  background  of  conscious- 
ness and  is  apt  to  be  overlooked  by  the  intellectual  attention. 
It  may  seem  as  though  we  were  together  just  to  fight,  to  be  an 
interference  and  torment  to  each  other.  We  fail  to  realize  that 
war  itself  however  destructive,  and  however  clumsy  and  primi- 
tive as  a  method  of  social  evaluation,  is  a  social  process  which 
"makes  some  gods,  some  men." 

To  sum  up  our  brief  genetic  retrospect,  we  may  say  that  while 
to  start  with,  both  in  race  history  and  individual  history,  the 
particular  will  is  a  rather  blind  function  of  an  individual  organ- 
ism, in  the  growing  civilized  life  of  which  we  are  a  part  the 
particular  mind  becomes  rather  a  function  of  a  social  organ- 
ization of  mind  with  its  necessary  division  of  labor  and  free  or 
compulsory  cooperation.  In  this  spiritual  economy  of  the 
world  we  are  literally  members  one  of  another. 

If  we  succeed  in  recovering  to  some  extent  the  innocence  of 
that  immediate  experience  from  which  all  our  abstractions  are 
made,  we  shall  find,  I  think,  that  the  isolation  of  mind  from 


INDIVIDUAL  AND   SOCIAL  MINDS  195 

mind  is  based  in  scientific  prejudice,  not  in  the  intuited  facts. 
The  processes  of  external  representation  and  analogical  infer- 
ence presuppose  immediate  social  acquaintance,  valuable  though 
they  are  in  our  attempts  to  know  about  other  minds.  We  do 
not  start  with  a  knowledge  of  our  own  minds  and  then  eject 
it  into  other  bodies,  but  we  become  conscious  of  being  minds 
through  our  interaction  with  other  minds.  It  is  in  meeting 
the  other  will,  which  thwarts  and  baffles  it,  that  our  own  will 
awakes  to  its  reality  and  claims.  Except  for  this  social  inter- 
action, it  would  remain  submerged  in  the  physical  continuities, 
a  mere  function  of  organic  conduct  as  we  find  it  to  be  in  the 
non-social  animals.  Our  knowledge  of  social  continuities 
starts,  like  all  knowledge  of  reality,  with  certain  intuited  facts. 
The  intersubjective  continuities  are  first  of  all  felt,  and  they 
are  felt  to  be  different  from  physical  continuities.  This  fact 
is  more  elementary  than  the  representation  or  inference  of  other 
minds;  and  is  presupposed  by  these  intellectual  processes. 
It  is  because  we  feel  the  continuities  with  other  minds  and 
must  adjust  ourselves  to  them  that  we  try  to  know  about  them. 
Our  intuition  of  social  continuities  is  as  immediate  and  elemen- 
tary a  fact  as  that  of  physical  continuities ;  and  from  the  point 
of  view  of  knowledge,  it  is  the  demands  of  the  social  interactions 
which  lead  us  to  distinguish  between  intersubjective  and  physical 
continuities.  We  could  not,  therefore,  very  well  infer  the 
former  from  the  latter.  The  mind,  whether  conscious  or  not, 
exists  always  in  certain  dynamic  contexts  or  energetic  fields; 
but,  so  far  as  we  know,  it  requires  the  unique  tension  of  an  in- 
tersubjective field,  a  conflict  with  another  mind,  to  raise  it  to 
consciousness  of  itself. 

The  agnostic  is  at  any  rate  consistently  wrong.  He  does  not 
hold  that  we  have  a  true  intuition  of  physical  continuities,  but 
are  isolated  as  minds.  He  regards  both  continuities  as  sub- 
jective states.  We  thus  live  in  a  sort  of  middle  world  of  phan- 
tasms, —  a  world  neither  mind  nor  body  nor  a  copy  of  either, 
but  a  misrepresentation  of  both.  Hence  we  can  know  no  real 
things,  we  can  trust  no  intuitions  as  regards  either  world. 
The  pragmatic  point  of  view,  on  the  other  hand,  insists  that  we 
must  start  with  our  immediate  intuitions  and  beliefs  and  try 
to  make  them  consistent  and  clear.  And  one  of  those  intuitions, 


196  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

is  that  of  the  first-hand  and  immediate  character  of  social 
companionship.  This  for  the  mind,  unspoiled  by  artificial 
abstraction,  is  as  categorically  convincing  a  fact  as  are  the 
immediate  sense  continuities  with  the  physical  world. 

What  is  there  to  set  over  against  this  convincing  intuition 
of  social  continuities  ?  There  is  an  abstract  body  of  secondary 
beliefs  due  to  scientific  theory.  We  still  insist  on  applying  the 
molecular  conception  of  interaction  to  the  relation  of  mind  to 
body.  To  the  old  type  interactionist,  it  means  that  mind 
somehow  must  be  located  within  the  brain  and  give  a  push  to 
its  molecules.  To  the  parallelist  such  interaction  is  incon- 
ceivable and  absurd,  and  the  only  relation  possible  is  that  of 
inert  concomitance  and  miraculous  correspondence,  while  the 
materialist  caps  the  climax  by  ruling  out  mind  altogether  ex- 
cept as  the  bare  abstraction  of  a  neutral  consciousness. 

The  mechanical  theory  has  long  presented  similar  difficulty 
as  to  physical  interaction.  This  difficulty  led  Leibniz  to  deny 
any  interaction  between  monads.  It  led  physical  science  to 
discard  the  so-called  secondary  qualities  because  in  their  case 
the  characteristic  action  of  the  physical  stimuli  was  supposed 
to  stop  with  the  end-organs.  Just  how  the  primary  qualities 
got  past  was  not  explained,  but  merely  taken  for  granted; 
and  the  agnostics  and  subjectivists  who  were  more  consistent 
had  no  trouble  in  insulating  mind  from  any  outer  physical  world. 
Such  was  the  logic  of  the  old  mechanical  hypothesis. 

Fortunately,  we  have  come  to  know  a  type  of  energy  which 
is  not  ponderable  matter.  The  immaterial  character  of  electric- 
ity was  long  obscured  by  our  carrying  over  our  mechanical 
models  into  the  new  field.  The  ether  was  invented  with  all 
sorts  of  contradictory  properties  to  furnish  a  medium  for  this 
new  energy.  But  whatever  may  be  our  belief  as  regards  the 
existence  of  the  ether,  we  have  at  any  rate  come  to  recognize 
that  in  electrical  energy  in  its  various  forms  we  have  a  unique 
type  of  immaterial  continuity  which  intersects  and  pervades  the 
gross  material  framework  in  all  sorts  of  ways.  What  is  opaque 
to  one  wave  length  becomes  translucent  to  another  —  to 
X-rays  or  violet  rays.  However  difficult  it  is  to  accustom  our 
minds  to  the  properties  of  this  immaterial  energy,  we  have  here 
a  type  of  continuity  of  far  greater  subtlety  than  any  known  be- 


INDIVIDUAL  AND   SOCIAL  MINDS  197 

fore,  a  type  where  molecular  models  cease  to  be  applicable.  As 
the  discovery  of  free  electricity  has  liberated  the  conception 
of  this  energy  from  matter,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  conception 
of  mind  may  also  be  liberated  from  the  hypothetical  models 
which  have  made  our  immediate  convictions  as  to  the  con- 
tinuities of  mind  with  the  physical  world  and  with  other  minds 
absurd. 

As  electrical  energy  rides  on  material  energy  and  is  thus 
focalized  in  definite  directions,  while  yet  establishing  its  own 
terminal  continuities,  so  we  may  conceive  that  mental  energy 
rides  on  electrical  energy  and  yet  establishes  its  own  immediately 
intuited  continuities.  Within  our  own  body  the  mental  energy 
seems  to  travel  on  the  electrical  energy  of  the  nervous  system. 
And  why  not  on  the  electromagnetic  field  with  which  our 
nervous  system  is  continuous?  When  we  send  a  voice  over 
an  electric  wire,  don't  we  also  send  the  mental  impulse  which 
gives  character  and  persuasiveness  to  that  voice  and  makes  a 
will  at  the  other  end  respond  to  it  in  a  definite  way?  Are  we 
certain  that  the  will  to  send  the  voice  stays  in  the  brain  ?  That 
we  believe  so  is  due,  I  believe,  to  an  artificial  tradition. 

I  do  not  care  to  go  on  indefinitely  and  work  out  possible 
analogies  between  mental  energy  and  electrical.  They  will 
easily  suggest  themselves  and  may  easily  be  overworked.  We 
have  no  more  right  to  transfer  the  electrical  conceptions  bodily 
to  the  mental  realm  than  we  have  to  transfer  the  material  con- 
ceptions to  the  electrical  realm.  What  I  wish  to  emphasize 
is  that  the  conception  of  electrical  fields  of  energy  and  their 
immaterial  continuities  across  space,  intersecting  our  gross 
material  world,  seems  to  furnish  a  model  which  fits  in  with  our 
unconquerable  conviction  in  the  immediate  companionship  of 
mind  with  mind.  Let  us  substitute  for  the  old  conception  of 
the  soul  as  an  indivisible,  localized  atom,  the  conception  of  a 
field  of  energy  with  its  vague  penumbral  edges  or  spreadings 
and  its  more  or  less  focalized  and  shifting  center  of  activity, 
and  we  shall  have  no  intellectual  obstacle  to  dealing  with  our 
social  intuitions. 

Such  a  conception  conveys  no  new  information.  This  must 
be  gotten  from  experience  as  before  and  always.  It  does  not 
support  a  telepathic  hypothesis  except  as  social  experience  in- 


198  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

dicates  such  an  hypothesis.  Our  social  continuities  become 
no  less  mediated  by  a  nervous  system,  end-organs  and  an  inter- 
vening physical  world,  whatever  its  constitution  may  be,  than 
before.  It  simply  insists  that  mental  energy  rides  across  and 
over  these  other  energies  and  establishes  real  overlappings,  true 
continuities  in  its  own  right  and  kind.  Whether  more  direct 
and  free  continuities  across  intervening  space  than  those  so 
mediated  are  possible  under  conditions  of  high  intensity  and 
the  special  receptivity  of  the  polar  fields  must  be  established 
by  evidence;  but  if  so  established  no  intellectual  model  need 
discredit  it,  and  we  may  admit  that  there  is  being  accumulated 
a  number  of  uncanny  instances  that  may  point  to  a  telepathy 
of  this  more  special  kind. 

When  once  we  abandon  the  dogma  of  the  insulation  of  mind 
somewhere  in  the  skull,  there  are  many  interesting  phenomena 
about  human  relations  that  may  throw  light  on  the  activity 
of  this  mental  energy.  Just  exactly  what  is  it  that  makes  people 
attractive  or  repellent  to  each  other  and  sometimes  the  opposite 
to  different  people  and  to  the  same  people  at  different  times? 
What  is  it  that  constitutes  the  " atmosphere"  of  some  person- 
alities and  the  absence  of  it  in  others  or  that  gives  some  a 
positive,  others  a  negative  "  atmosphere"  ?  What  is  that  makes 
some  psychically  warm,  others  cold,  and  others  colorless  ?  Why 
do  some  people  move  us  and  others  not,  though  the  latter  may 
have  the  better  argument  and  the  better  cause?  What  takes 
place  when  we  find  a  person  animated  in  conversation  ?  What 
happens  when  a  person  is  radiant  with  joy  and  makes  us  feel 
his  good  cheer?  What  is  the  dynamics  of  contagion,  be  it  of 
fear  or  courage?  These  are  just  a  few  of  the  questions  of 
everyday  social  life  which  we  shall  be  able  to  understand  better 
when  we  are  ready  to  accept  the  intuition  of  immediate  expe- 
rience that  the  will  is  an  energy  which  radiates  beyond  any 
definite  center ;  that  when  we  meet  in  sympathy  two  fields  of 
will  actually  blend ;  and  vice  versa  that  they  repel  each  other 
when  we  are  antagonistic.  Thus  love  and  hate  become  real 
first-hand  interactions  of  wills  of  which  the  corresponding 
emotions  are  the  reflex  effects. 

Language,  gestures,  and  other  sense  symbols  are  merely  the 
code  for  controlling  the  intellectual  associations  and  thus  making 


INDIVIDUAL  AND   SOCIAL  MINDS  199 

definite  the  meaning  of  mental  continuities.  They  do  not  con- 
stitute the  continuities.  Common  moods  and  common  atti- 
tudes are  possible  without  such  symbols,  but  without  them 
we  cannot  be  sure  of  the  similarity  of  the  associative  trains  of 
ideas  and  images  that  go  with  the  attitudes.  As  these  are 
bound  up  with  the  brain,  the  direct  communication  of  them 
becomes  more  difficult.  Music  succeeds  in  producing  common 
emotions  and  attitudes,  but  the  intellectual  associations  vary 
greatly  with  different  listeners.  It  is  the  former  that  furnish 
the  directly  intuited  character  of  intersubjective  continuities. 
It  is  reported  that  Carlyle  and  Tennyson  would  often  visit  to- 
gether for  a  long  time  without  either  saying  a  word.  Then 
Carlyle  would  get  up  and  take  his  hat  and  say :  "That  was  a 
good  visit,  Alfred."  Silent  communion  of  soul  with  soul  may 
give  us  the  strongest  sense  of  companionship. 

We  have  seen  that  we  must  recognize  two  types  of  con- 
tinuity, material  and  immaterial.  These  two  types  may 
occupy  the  same  space,  the  immaterial  intersecting,  riding  over 
and  bridging  the  material  in  various  ways.  In  a  scientific 
way  we  have  come  to  know  one  type  of  immaterial  continuity 
with  great  definiteness,  that  of  electricity.  The  other  type  of 
immaterial  continuity,  viz.  the  mental  type  of  intersubjective 
communion,  human  beings  have  been  acquainted  with  and 
convinced  of  since  the  beginning  of  social  relations,  but  our 
knowledge  of  it  is  fragmentary.  This  is  probably  in  part  due 
to  our  scientific  prejudice.  In  no  case  of  spatial  continuity 
can  we  follow  it  point  for  point.  We  must  piece  out  our  per- 
cepts by  means  of  our  concepts  in  any  knowledge  of  continuity. 
But  we  make  our  concepts  in  any  case  to  describe  the  intuited 
results.  If  we  can  understand  these  results  only  by  assuming 
energetic  continuity,  i.e.  if  somehow  two  energies  must  con- 
tribute directly  to  the  result,  then  we  have  a  right  to  believe 
that  the  continuity  exists. 

In  a  physical  compound  such  as  H20  we  know  that  there 
must  be  action  of  the  chemical  energies  upon  each  other,  be- 
cause the  result  is  not  the  mere  external  addition  of  the  prop- 
erties of  the  two  elements  as  we  know  them  in  other  contexts. 
The  compound,  water,  is  a  new  individual  with  distinct  prop- 
erties of  its  own.  The  relations  are  in  part  at  least  internal 


200  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

relations,  affecting  the  nature  of  each  element  contributing. 
What  is  true  in  the  physical  compound  is  true  in  the  social 
compound.  The  will  of  the  group,  swayed  by  a  common  mo- 
tive and  common  emotion,  is  not  an  external  addition  of  the 
traits  of  the  particular  individuals,  as  taken  either  in  psycho- 
logical isolation  or  in  other  social  compounds.  The  specific 
group  mind  has  properties  of  its  own  which  involve  fusion  of  the 
various  individuals  into  a  new  result.  The  various  individuals 
feel  a  different  degree  of  convincingness,  of  power,  of  sugges- 
tibility as  regards  the  dominant  impulse  for  being  a  part  of  the 
social  situation.  A  new  energetic  field  has  been  established, 
a  new  individual  has  arisen  with  distinct  characteristics.  There 
is  somehow  a  real  overlapping  —  an  immediate  inhibition  or 
reinforcement  of  wills,  peculiar  to  the  unique  social  situation. 
The  relation  here  as  in  chemical  compounds  affects  the  natures 
of  the  terms  and  is  not  merely  an  external  relation  between 
abstract  entities.  If  we  must  thus  take  the  result,  then  the 
continuity  must  be  a  real  continuity.  Will  must  somehow  act 
upon  will  within  a  common  energetic  field  to  produce  this 
individual  unity. 

It  is,  moreover,  through  the  variety  of  such  situations  or 
compounds  that  the  self  comes  to  know  its  own  characteristics. 
No  man  liveth  unto  himself ;  we  live  only  in  situations.  And 
the  most  important  situations  for  knowing  ourselves  are  these 
common  reactions,  when  we  feel  eacfi  other's  tension,  conflict, 
and  sympathy.  The  ego,  therefore,  when  conceived  apart 
from  such  social  situations  is  largely  an  abstraction.  We 
exist  in  clusters  or  common  fields  of  energy  whose  mutual 
attraction  or  repulsion  we  feel,  rather  than  as  abstract  indi- 
viduals. The  particular  self  is  a  later  abstraction  made  pos- 
sible largely  because  of  the  variety  and  complexity  of  social 
situations  into  which  civilized  man  enters  as  compared  with 
tribal  man.  This,  with  his  abstract  name,  enables  himself 
and  others  to  dissociate  him  from  particular  contexts  and  to 
regard  him  as  an  independent  personality.  But  even  this 
abstraction  is  a  social  function  and  is  rather  a  discrimination 
of  certain  constant  traits  within  a  variety  of  situations  than  an 
independent  existence  which  would  mean  nothing. 

Not  only  is  the  social  field  of  mind  intuited  as  having  its  own 


INDIVIDUAL  AND   SOCIAL  MINDS  201 

unique  traits  as  an  individual,  but  it  must  be  so  dealt  with  in 
our  practical  relations.  It  commands  our  loyalty  or  antago- 
nism as  an  individual.  This  is  very  different  from  the  loyalty 
or  the  antagonism  which  we  show  toward  particular  com- 
ponents. It  may  even  be  the  direct  opposite.  We  may  love 
the  particular  person  and  yet  hate  his  nation  or  vice  versa. 
This -loyalty  or  antagonism  to  the  group  is  not  an  attitude  to 
a  mere  collection  of  particular  persons,  but  a  solidarity  or  unity 
that  includes  them  and  in  a  measure  makes  them  what  they 
are.  In  savage  life  where  persons  are  not  abstracted  from  the 
group,  no  difference  is  made  in  the  treatment  of  the  isolated 
person  and  the  group.  The  religious  command  to  the  ancient 
Hebrews  was  to  exterminate  indiscriminately  the  members  of 
another  nation.  The  members  were  not  conceived  as  having 
potential  relations  as  possible  members  of  the  conquering  group. 
The  more  common  custom,  however,  among  primitive  nations 
was  to  preserve  the  conquered  as  slaves  of  the  conquerors. 
This,  however,  was  a  merely  instrumental  and  external  relation. 
In  the  case  of  the  subordinate  unity,  the  family,  the  individual 
member  was  not,  any  more  than  in  the  nation,  conceived  as  a 
potential  member  of  other  families.  Even  after  marriage  he 
remained  a  part  of  the  family  of  the  patriarch  and  subordinate 
to  it.  It  is  in  the  complexity  of  the  potential  relationships 
of  civilized  life  that  the  individual  comes  to  stand  out  as  having 
a  dignity  and  independence  apart  from  any  one  complex. 

In  studying  the  nature  of  the  social  mind,  we  must  proceed 
empirically  as  we  do  in  the  case  of  the  particular  mind.  In 
the  case  of  the  social  mind  as  in  the  case  of  the  particular  mind, 
we  can  study  the  subject-object  relation,  the  unity,  the  iden- 
tity, the  worth,  and  the  immortality  of  the  individual  con- 
cerned. As  regards  the  subject-object  relation,  there  is  in  the 
case  of  the  social  mind,  the  dominant,  selective  will,  and  there 
is  the  object  aimed  at.  While  there  is  a  many-headed  focus 
of  the  social  consciousness,  the  real  subject  which  evaluates 
and  decides  is  not  the  particular  individual,  but  the  field  of 
common  tendency  and  emotion.  It  is  the  group  will  which  de- 
cides through  the  particular  person.  This  will  selects  differ- 
ently—  emphasizes  different  values,  has  different  inhibitions, 
and  releases,  from  the  individual  will.  It  may  select  to  sacri- 


202  A   REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

fice,  when  the  individual  would  conserve;  it  may  even  disre- 
gard the  individual's  claims  altogether.  The  individual  can 
say :  I  live,  yet  not  I  but  the  common  will  which  liveth  in  me. 

The  leader  is  no  exception  to  this.  He  is  the  function  of 
the  group,  swayed  by  its  common  interest  and  in  turn  swaying 
it  by  his  affirmation.  The  leader  and  the  led  are  part  of  the 
same  social  situation  —  victims  of  the  same  illusions,  subject 
to  the  same  exaggerations,  fascinated  by  the  same  ideals.  Only 
because  the  leader  and  the  led  are  controlled  by  the  same  values 
can  the  relation  exist.  There  could  have  been  no  Napoleonic 
age  of  sacrifice  and  devastation  if  the  people  had  not  shared 
with  their  leader  the  false  dreams  of  military  glory  and  of  bloody 
conquest.  They  were  alike  victims  of  the  illusions  of  the  age. 
The  leader  may  grasp  the  situation  more  clearly  than  the 
rest ;  he  may  divine  what  the  others  want ;  but  in  the  end  he 
only  leads  because  he  symbolizes  the  ambition  and  ideals  of  the 
led. 

In  this  social  situation,  the  intellect  plays  its  due  role  as  it 
does  in  individual  life.  The  object  aimed  at  calls  up  the  ap- 
propriate associations  or  means  for  its  realization;  and  the 
movements  and  ideas  spread  from  one  to  another  by  imitation 
—  all  in  obedience  to  the  internal  contagion  and  the  dominance 
of  a  common  impulse.  Here,  as  in  the  economy  of  the  individual 
consciousness,  the  intellectual  factor  rises  or  sinks  in  prominence 
with  the  complexity  and  novelty  of  the  task  to  be  performed. 
In  the  chance  crowd  and  the  mob,  habit  and  spontaneous 
association  are  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  simple  impulse.  In 
difficult  situations  deliberative  judgment  may  be  called  for  to 
adapt  means  to  ends.  But  in  either  case  it  is  the  group  will 
which  is  the  subject  controlling  the  train  of  ideas,  the  operations 
of  the  various  brains  involved.  It  is  a  common  mind  tapping 
the  resources  of  the  individual  centers  involved. 

In  the  group  mind,  too,  there  is  the  consciousness  of  identity 
from  moment  to  moment  —  the  persistence  of  the  impulse  or 
ideal  to  be  realized.  This,  as  in  the  case  of  the  mob,  may  be 
a  mere  momentary  impulse,  due  to  the  predominance  of  a 
certain  primitive  instinct  for  the  time  being,  such  as  fear  or 
anger.  But  it  may  also  be  a  more  complex  and  permanent 
tendency  involving  ideal  organization.  The  will  of  a  nation 


INDIVIDUAL  AND   SOCIAL  MINDS  203 

may  persist  generation  after  generation  while  individuals  come 
and  go.  Through  the  internal  changes  and  external  vicissi- 
tudes of  ages,  there  is  still  something  distinct  and  characteristic 
about  British  mind  as  contrasted  with  French.  It  is  a  mistake 
to  identify  the  social  mind  with  the  mob  merely  and  its  evanes- 
cent existence.  Its  identity  must  be  judged,  as  we  judge  in- 
dividual identity,  by  the  common  drift  of  tendencies,  by  the 
persistent  traits,  which  overlap  the  various  moments  of  its 
existence.  This  is  never  abstract  identity,  any  more  than  it 
is  in  the  case  of  the  particular  self,  but  the  persistence  of  a 
direction  of  will  within  an  ever-changing  historic  process. 

As  regards  the  type  of  unity  which  dominates  social  minds 
here  again  we  find  the  same  variety  as  in  particular  minds. 
The  unity  may  be  largely  external  —  the  imitation  and  venera- 
tion of  common  customs  and  traditions  —  or  it  may  be  a  thor- 
oughgoing unity  of  common  ethical  ideals  and  the  recognition 
of  common  claims  and  responsibilities.  Only  in  the  highest 
stages  of  development  is  the  latter  type  of  unity  dominant. 
With  the  group  mind,  as  with  the  particular  mind,  it  is  only 
through  some  great  crisis  that  it  discovers  what  it  really  means, 
that  its  dominant  tendency  rises  to  a  conscious  purpose,  and 
that  conscious  loyalty  to  such  an  ideal  becomes  a  guiding  emo- 
tion in  its  conduct.  In  the  absence  of  such  crises,  the  ideal  is 
implicit  and  life  becomes  routine,  guided  largely  by  the  external 
associations  of  custom. 

As  regards  the  worth  of  social  minds,  this,  as  in  the  case  of 
particular  minds,  must  be  determined  by  the  dominant  ideal. 
Does  its  leading  furnish  the  largest  harmony  and  realization 
of  the  particular  factors  involved?  Does  it  produce  proper 
control  of  the  primitive  by  the  ideal  and  yet  give  the  primitive 
its  due?  Does  it  play  the  whole  scale  of  values  possible  to 
human  nature?  Does  it  furnish  the  fullest  possibility  of  de- 
velopment for  the  future?  Then  it  has  realized  the  maximum 
of  worth.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  common  direction  of  ten- 
dency is  produced  merely  by  the  intersection  of  a  certain  level 
of  human  nature  to  the  inhibition  and  neglect  of  others,  more 
particularly  if  this  level  be  that  of  the  primitive  tendencies 
of  impulsive  satisfaction,  then  the  social  mind,  as  the  particular, 
becomes  immoral. 


204  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

Finally,  as  regards  the  immortality  of  social  minds,1  they 
will  survive  as  individuals  will  survive,  if  they  have  intrinsic 
worth  as  recognized  by  the  growing  process  of  history.  Here 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  immortality  of  the  individual  and  that 
of  his  group  are  inseparable.  The  immortality  of  the  Greek 
mind  will  survive  while  the  minds  of  Homer  and  Plato  survive. 
In  them  lives  the  genius  of  the  Greeks,  even  as  they  live  in 
its  atmosphere  and  give  articulate  meaning  to  its  tendencies. 
The  merest  fragment  of  a  Greek  artist  is  alive  with  the  Greek 
mind.  Neither  individual  nor  social  will  depends  upon  physio- 
logical vehicles,  once  it  has  created  for  itself  a  spiritual  body  of 
art,  science,  and  institutions.  In  these  lives  the  real  will,  the 
real  purpose  of  a  people.  Connect  with  this  spiritual  field  of 
energy,  and  you  feel  the  influx  of  its  blood  with  new  capacities 
for  growth  and  appreciation.  Whenever  history  has  connected 
vitally  with  the  Greek  mind  or  Hebrew  mind,  it  has  meant  a 
new  epoch  of  life  and  inspiration  —  a  new  impulse  towards 
science  and  art  or  a  new  heightening  of  the  moral  level  of  the 
times.  And  minds  which  can  thus  energize  and  transform  man- 
kind are  not  dead,  though  for  a  time  they  may  be  disconnected 
from  history.  In  the  unified  self  of  human  development  they 
continue  their  full  significance  and  life.  And  if  there  is  an 
overarching  spiritual  communion,  greater  than  humanity,  en- 
veloping and  conserving  spiritual  values,  these  social  minds, 
we  may  believe,  have  a  unique  individual  immortality  within 
it  proportionate  to  their  permanent  significance. 

1  For  a  fuller  discussion,  see  the  author's  article,  "Social  Immortality,* I 
International  Journal  of  Ethics,  1915. 


PART  III 

SPACE  AND  REALITY 


CHAPTER  XII 

PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND  GEOMETRIC  SPACE 

THERE  are  two  aspects  to  the  space  concept.  These  have 
not  been  sufficiently  differentiated  in  the  past,  viz.  the  series 
character  of  the  concept  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  void  on  the 
other.  The  confusion  of  these  two  aspects  of  the  space  con- 
cept led  to  the  classic  controversy  between  Newton  and  Leibniz. 
Newton  emphasized  the  reality  of  pure  space.  Leibniz  em- 
phasized the  geometric  or  relational  aspect.  According  to  the 
former,  "  space  has  an  existence,  in  some  sense  whatever  it  may 
be,  independent  of  the  bodies  which  it  contains.  The  bodies 
occupy  space,  and  it  is  not  intrinsically  unmeaning  to  say  that 
this  definite  body  occupies  this  definite  part  of  space,  and  not 
that  part  of  space,  without  reference  to  other  bodies  occupying 
space.  According  to  the  relational  theory  of  space,  of  which 
the  chief  exponent  was  Leibniz,  space  is  nothing  but  a  certain 
assemblage  of  the  relations  between  the  various  particular  bodies 
in  space.  The  idea  of  space  with  no  bodies  in  it  is  absurd."  1 
In  the  history  of  thought,  the  aspect  of  the  void  was  the  first  to 
be  developed.  The  interest  in  things  preceded  the  interest  in 
thought.  Moreover,  this  aspect  is  involved  in  our  practical 
adjustments.  It  is  implied  in  the  concepts  of  motion  and 
interaction.  It  is  presupposed  in  the  answer  of  the  atomists 
to  Parmenides  and  Melissos.  Parmenides  argued  that  non- 
being  is  unthinkable,  therefore,  there  can  be  no  void  and  no 
motion.  The  atomists  argued,  on  the  other  hand,  that  there 
is  motion,  therefore  the  void  must  be  real ;  and  hence  assumed 
atoms  and  the  void  as  their  two  ultimate  principles.  In  Em- 
pedocles  and  his  followers,  the  theory  of  pores  as  conditioning 

1  Article,  "Geometry  (VII),"  by  Whitehead  in  the  llth  ed.,  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. 

207 


208  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

the  interaction  of  things,  both  upon  each  other  and  upon  our 
sense  organs,  might  have  opened  up  the  problem  of  the  relativity 
of  knowledge,  had  the  implications  been  seen. 

The  other  aspect  of  the  space  concept,  that  of  series,  could 
come  into  prominence  only  as  the  Copernican  change  took 
place  from  the  interest  in  things  to  the  interest  in  those  mental 
processes  and  laws  that  condition  their  appearance  for  us.  In 
so  far  as  the  serial  idea  is  present  in  ancient  times,  as  among  the 
Pythagoreans,  it  is  ontological ;  and  against  this  conception  of 
space  and  time,  Zeno  had  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  con- 
tinuity and  motion  are  impossible.  What  he  failed  to  see  is 
that  our  points  and  fractional  divisions  are  but  ideal  tools  in 
the  service  of  our  will  in  predicting  and  controlling  the  ener- 
getic pulses  of  the  world  with  which  we  must  deal.  These  are 
not  infinitely  divisible,  but  only  pragmatically  so.  With 
Aristotle,  the  concept  of  a  figured  space  is  upheld  as  against 
the  void,  but  the  boundary  of  one  body  with  reference  to  an- 
other is  still  an  ontological  boundary.  Since  Kant,  it  has  been 
generally  agreed  that  the  space  concept  is  adequately  expressed 
in  serial  terms ;  and  hence  the  ideality  of  space  logically  follows. 
That  the  ghost  of  the  void,  so  long  laid,  should  rise  again  must 
make  the  hair  of  the  boldest  Kantian  fairly  stand  on  end.  But 
the  thesis  I  wish  to  maintain  in  this  paper  is  the  ideality,  in- 
deed, of  serial  space,  but  the  reality  of  space  as  pure  space,  or 
the  space  of  physics  and  astronomy.  In  this  chapter,  I  wish 
to  make  some  comments  about  psychological  and  geometric 
space.  In  the  next,  I  shall  proceed  to  the  proofs  for  ontological 
space. 

Psychological  Space 

First,  a  word  as  regards  the  presuppositions  of  our  perceptual 
space,  or  the  a  priori  character  of  the  space  intuition.  It  was 
this  particularly  that  attracted  the  attention  of  Kant;  and 
this  priority  to  experience  furnishes  his  most  important  proof 
for  the  ideality  of  space.  Kant's  arguments  for  the  a  priori 
character  of  the  space  intuition  are,  briefly :  first,  that  in 
order  to  represent  things  outside  myself,  or  "as  side  by  side, 
that  is,  not  only  as  different,  but  in  different  places,  the  repre- 
sentation (Vorstellung)  of  space  must  already  be  there"; 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        209 

secondly,  that  "it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that  there  should 
be  no  space,  though  one  might  very  well  imagine  that  there 
might  be  space  without  objects  to  fill  it";  thirdly,  that  "on 
this  necessity  of  an  a  priori  representation  of  space  rests  the 
apodictic  certainty  of  all  geometrical  principles,  and  the  pos- 
sibility of  their  construction  a  priori."  1  Space,  in  other  words, 
cannot  be  a  generalization  from  empirical  data ;  for  in  that  case 
we  could  make  only  empirical  judgments  about  it.  That  we 
can  make  necessary  judgments  about  straight  lines,  the  proper- 
ties of  triangles,  the  unity  and  infinity  of  space  is  due  to  its  a 
priori  character. 

Now,  as  regards  the  first  of  these  arguments,  it  is,  of  course, 
true  that  externality  is  an  immediate  fact.  We  do  not  start 
with  experience  as  internal,  and  then  project  it  into  an  external 
world,  whether  of  things  or  selves.  The  "intuition"  of  ex- 
ternality is,  first  of  all,  an  organic  affair,  due  to  the  evolutionary 
adaptation  of  the  organism  to  its  world.  It  is  not  dependent 
on  consciousness.  The  purely  reflex  centers  react  to  specific 
external  stimuli;  and  so,  for  that  matter,  do  inorganic  struc- 
tures. The  magnetic  needle  takes  account  of  the  presence  of 
the  loadstone  as  an  external  fact,  varying  with  distance.  These 
are  primal  reactions  which  antedate  and  condition  conscious 
experience.  They  are  subjective  only  to  a  false  metaphysics. 
As  regards  the  second  argument,  physical  things  must,  of  course, 
be  conceived  as  in  space;  we  cannot,  in  our  physical  experi- 
ments, either  conceptually  or  actually  get  rid  of  space ;  but  we 
can  abstract  from  things  by  creating  a  vacuum  and  observe 
what  happens.  This  does  not  hold  in  the  world  of  our  logical 
abstractions.  Logical  entities  and  relations  do  not  have  to 
occupy  space;  and  in  our  logical  manipulations  we  can,  of 
course,  abstract  from  space,  and  take  the  properties  of  things 
out  of  spatial  relations.  But  this  is  no  argument  against  Kant, 
for  he  expressly  limited  the  relevance  of  space  to  the  world  of 
sense  perception.  In  his  third  argument,  Kant  changes  his 
point  of  departure  from  physics  to  geometry.  The  space  which 
physics  deals  with  does  have  empirical  properties  which  cannot 
be  predicated  a  priori,  though  our  nervous  system  has  long 

1  The  quotations  are  from  "The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  section  A  of 
the  Transcendental  Esthetic,  Max  Muller's  translation. 


210  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

been  adjusted  to  them  in  the  survival  struggle  of  the  race,  and 
so  they  are  to  a  certain  extent  presupposed  in  our  perceptions 
and  reactions.  They  do  not,  however,  have  apodictic  cer- 
tainty. The  properties  of  geometric  space  do,  because  while 
they  are  abstractions  from  our  empirical  world,  they  are  de- 
termined by  the  system  of  postulates  which  we  choose  for  the 
special  type  of  geometry.  Certainly  the  axioms  of  Euclidean 
geometry  are  not  innate  in  the  sense  that  the  baby  possesses 
them.  They  are  rather  logical  limits  and  presuppose  reflective 
thought  with  its  laws,  unless  we  regard  everything  as  innate 
that  we  have  learned  before  we  are  twelve  years  old,  to  use  a 
jibe  of  Schopenhauer's.  They  had,  indeed,  become  so  in- 
grained in  the  social  tradition  of  thought  at  Kant's  time  that 
he  could  not  conceive  the  contrary.  For  us,  however,  they  are 
only  one  type,  though  a  convenient  type,  of  geometric  postu- 
lates. They  certainly  are  not  forms  of  naive  perception. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  certain  presuppositions  are  implied, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  our  later  reflective  consciousness, 
in  our  biological  and  perceptual  adjustments.  The  most  general 
of  these  are  the  law  of  externality  and  the  law  of  fusion.  One 
is  as  important  as  the  other  for  the  building  up  of  our  world  of 
sense  perceptions.  We  must  be  so  constituted  as  to  locate 
some  impressions  within  each  other's  space,  and  others  in 
different  spaces,  in  accordance  with  the  economy  of  attention 
and  the  demands  of  conduct.  The  former  is  as  important  as 
the  latter.  We  must  have  unity  of  things  as  well  as  externality 
of  things.  If  we  did  not  have  the  innate  law  of  externality, 
we  should  not  spread  things  out.  If  we  did  not  possess  the 
innate  law  of  fusion,  we  should  have  no  things  to  spread  out. 
If  interpenetration  were  not  a  law  of  our  perceptual  world  as 
well  as  externality ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  it  were  the  law  of  space 
that  all  impressions  must  be  spread  out  as  external  to  each 
other,  we  should  not  be  able  to  learn  from  experience;  we 
could  never  know  a  physical  world.  It  is  as  a  result  of  the  de- 
mands of  the  environment  that  the  organism  has  been  forced 
to  locate  certain  impressions,  which  it  can  attend  to  at  the  same 
time  conveniently  and  which  recur  together,  in  each  other's 
space  —  the  prospective  taste  value  of  food  in  the  space  of  cer- 
tain tactual,  olfactory  and  visual  sensations.  It  has  been 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        211 

forced  also  to  orient  itself  with  reference  to  stimuli,  external 
to  each  other  —  favorable  or  noxious  —  as  spread  out  in  differ- 
ent directions  and  at  different  distances  in  its  environment. 

And  now  a  word  about  the  content  of  psychological  space. 
Since  Lotze,  a  great  deal  has  been  made  of  local  signs ;  and  the 
psychologist's  imagination  has  shown  no  end  of  ingenuity  in 
constructing  space  maps.  In  textbooks  of  psychology,  a 
great  deal  of  space  has  been  devoted  to  how  a  space  might 
have  grown  up.  However  ingenious  these  attempts  may  be, 
and  however  important  pedagogically  in  robbing  psychology 
of  its  "soft"  character,  it  is  becoming  clear  that  these  con- 
structions are  largely  artificial  —  due  to  a  certain  psychological 
tradition,  rather  than  an  account  of  the  actual  genesis  of  our 
space  coordinations.  I,  for  one,  cannot  discover  in  normal  ac- 
tivity any  such  map,  either  tactual  or  visual.  I  can,  to  be 
sure,  by  a  voluntary  effort,  construct  in  imagination  such  a 
picture  or  map  of  my  body  and  then  localize  with  reference 
to  it ;  and  I  can  see  how  the  compulsory  construction  of  such 
a  map,  in  order  to  understand  the  so-called  psychology  of 
space,  especially  with  sufficient  faith  in  authority,  might  make 
such  a  map  a  permanent  part  of  our  mental  furniture.  But 
as  an  account  of  genesis,  it  is  gross  mythology,  which  lacks  even 
picturesqueness. 

The  ingenious  explanation,  by  some  psychologists,  that  the 
absence  of  any  such  psychological  furniture  in  our  actual 
consciousness  is  due  to  the  law  of  economy,  is  of  course  equally 
a  priori.  It  certainly  must  still  be  shown  that  anybody  nor- 
mally develops  such  a  map,  whether  tactual  or  visual.  At  any 
rate,  when  we  are  in  a  position  to  introspect,  it  does  not  exist. 
I  cannot  discover  even  a  word  image  except  as  it  is  artificially 
produced  or  called  forth  as  a  result  of  expectancy.  When  I 
catch  myself  in  the  act,  I  do  not  find  anything  of  the  kind. 
If  you  say  that  I  have  had  this  content,  but  that  it  has  dis- 
appeared, that,  at  least,  ought  to  be  proved.  The  recollection 
from  a  previous  existence,  and  almost  any  other  psychological 
theory  of  genesis  might  be  proved  in  the  same  way. 

Our  theories  of  space  must  be  rewritten  largely  in  biological 
terms.  The  coordinations  of  the  reactions  of  the  human  in- 
fant, as  in  the  animal,  are  primarily  a  physiological  matter, 


212  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

with  the  difference  that  while  in  the  chicken,  for  example,  the 
coordinations  develop  largely  in  response  to  intra-organic 
stimuli  before  birth,  in  a  human  being  extra-organic  stimuli 
play  a  much  greater  role.  But  the  coordinations,  in  either 
case,  such  as  defensive  movements,  grasping,  sucking,  the 
coordinations  of  the  various  sense-organs  with  each  other, 
walking,  etc.,  are  primarily  organic  adaptations.  How  far 
trial  and  habit  enter  in  to  make  definite  such  organic  adjust- 
ments must  be  ascertained  by  scientific  observation.  "In  the 
human  infant,  walking  seems,  from  such  observations  as  have 
been  collected,  to  occur  at  the  proper  age  without  training  or 
unsuccessful  efforts."  *  The  cerebellum  is  the  great  coor- 
dinating center  of  muscular  movements.  It  is  "fundamentally 
an  expansion  of  the  local  center  of  the  vestibular  branch  of  the 
eighth  nerve."  2  Whether  the  semicircular  canals  furnish  any 
sensations  or  not,  their  prime  function  is  evidently  to  furnish 
stimuli  to  the  cerebellum  which  has  both  a  tonic  function,  and 
the  function  of  being  an  organ  of  equilibrium.  "The  cerebellum 
is  an  organ  where  are  gathered  together  sensory  impulses 
from  all  the  muscles  of  the  body.  In  this  way,  the  cerebellum 
receives  information,  as  it  were,  regarding  the  condition  of  every 
muscle ;  in  it  is  formed  a  sort  of  representation  or  reproduction 
—  though  so  far  as  known,  not  attended  with  consciousness  — 
of  the  dynamic  condition  of  the  entire  musculature.  To  this 
is  added  the  very  important  function  provided  for  by  the  re- 
ceptors of  the  inner  ear,  which  responds  to  the  positions  and 
movements  of  the  head  in  space.  Thus  the  postures,  move- 
ments, muscular  tensions,  and  external  strains  exerted  on  the 
body  at  every  movement,  act  on  the  cerebellum,  and  through 
it  reflexly  on  the  muscles."  3  In  regard  to  the  differential 
quality  in  our  response  to  position,  "the  most  that  can  be  said 
is  that  perception  of  position  is  due  to  some  peculiar  quality  or 
motor  connection  that  each  point  on  the  skin  or  retina  pos- 
sesses." 4  But  this  quality,  so  far  as  the  skin  is  concerned,  is 
not  apparent  to  introspection,  and  as  regards  the  retina,  would 
appear  to  be  largely  speculative.  If  such  a  differential  cannot 

1  "Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology,"  Ladd  and  Woodworth,  p.  157. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  156.  *  Ibid.,  p.  156. 
4Pillsbury's  "Essentials  of  Psychology,"  pp.  163-164. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        213 

be  discriminated  by  the  expert  psychologist,  how  can  we  ex- 
pect the  untrained  man,  who  is  not  even  looking  for  it,  to  judge 
on  the  basis  of  it?  Evidently,  the  nervous  system,  whether  it 
is  the  cerebellum  or  cerebrum,  or  some  other  center  that  is 
concerned,  has  a  discrimination  far  keener  than  our  conscious- 
ness. It  seems  clear  that  we  must  assume  organic  perception 
and  organic  memory  to  account  for  such  adjustments.  So  far 
as  correlating  these  differentials  into  definite  directions  and 
distances,  all  that  we  know  about  it  is  that  it  is  due  to  move- 
ment. Through  a  trial  and  habit  process,  in  which  conscious- 
ness may  not  be  present,  and  when  present  may  be  merely 
a  spectator,  or  at  most  a  cue  for  certain  reactions,  the  parts 
of  the  organism  become  more  definitely  adjusted  to  each  other, 
and  to  the  external  perspectives.  One  thing  is  certain,  when 
we  are  in  a  position  to  introspect,  the  principal  coordinations 
to  our  space  world  are  a  motor  affair.1 

A  striking  argument  against  the  intellectualistic  theories  of 
space  perception  has  been  furnished  recently  through  some 
researches  by  Francis  B.  Sumner.2  It  was  found  that  the  flat- 
fish, without  any  possibility  of  comparison,  copies  on  its  back 
the  hue  and  (within  certain  limits)  the  geometric  pattern  of 
the  bottom  upon  which  it  is  placed.  This  is  done  through  the 
flatfish's  eyes.  It  is  a  trial  and  error  process  where  practice 
greatly  shortens  the  process.  It  is  a  selective  adaptation  which 
takes  account  of  only  part  of  the  visual  field;  and  since  the 
comparison  of  patterns  is  by  the  spectator,  and  not  by  the 
flatfish,  it  does  not  seem  necessary  to  assume  consciousness. 
While  one  must  be  careful  about  carrying  the  analogy  whole- 
sale into  human  space  perception,  we  may  well  suppose  that 
the  fundamental  space  categories  are  the  result  of  the  direct 
action  of  the  environment  without  consciousness  being  neces- 
sarily involved.  Our  intuition  of  three  dimensional  space  is 
doubtless  due  to  the  stimuli  to  which  the  organism  must  respond. 
The  innateness  of  the  straight  line  may,  in  the  first  instance,  be 
due  to  the  fact  that  light  travels  in  straight  lines,  though 

1  Delabarre  has  shown  the  importance  of  eye  movements  in  our  taking  ac- 
count of  direction.     But  it  is  not  clear  that  either  the  stimuli  or  the  taking 
account  are  conscious  processes. 

2  Journal  of  Experimental  Zoology,  10,  No.  4.     For  an   excellent   summary 
see  W.  B.  Pitkin  in  "The  New  Realism,"  pp.  397  ff. 


214  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

survival  advantage  would  tend  to  fix  it.  There  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  human  organism  differs  essentially  in  such 
reactions  from  the  plant,  for  example,  which  reacts  by  definite 
tropisms.  Should  the  plant  become  reflective,  it  would  doubt- 
less find  the  fundamental  categories  of  space  orientation  as  a 
part  of  its  constitution. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  our  space  conscious- 
ness, as  we  find  it  in  adult  introspection,  is  a  highly  conven- 
tionalized affair,  and  shot  through  with  conceptual  elements. 
In  the  process  of  social  interpretation  and  adjustment,  we 
come  to  abstract  from  our  individual  perspectives  of  nearer 
and  farther.  The  various  perceptual  contents  are  spread  out 
into  a  common  scheme.  The  two  heterogeneous  types  of  "  signs," 
furnished  by  sight  and  touch,  are  translated  into  common  re- 
actions in  the  service  of  our  practical  interests.  Loci  are  di- 
vested of  their  purely  egoistic  reference.  Different  astronomers 
in  different  parts  of  the  world  can  direct  their  telescopes  to  the 
same  point  in  the  heavens,  and  different  geographers  can 
cooperate  in  piecing  out  the  map  of  the  earth. 

But  such  a  perspective  scheme,  we  must  remember,  is  an 
artificial  equivalent  and  not,  as  such  at  any  rate,  real.  The 
map  of  England,  with  its  dots  and  colors,  the  astronomer's 
squares  and  circles,  the  physicist's  measures  of  footrules  and 
yardsticks,  are  convenient  substitutes  for  the  actual  relations 
and  distances;  but  no  one  would  maintain  that  they  are  the 
real  thing.  Even  though  perceptual  symbols  are  used,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  map,  the  particular  scale  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  truthfulness  of  the  map.  It  may  be  any  scale,  so  long  as  it 
corresponds  to  the  actual  relations.  With  such  a  space  con- 
struction, we  have  no  quarrel  so  long  as  its  phenomenal  char- 
acter is  recognized.  We  do  find  it  convenient  for  social  pur- 
poses to  construct  such  a  system  of  artificial  shorthand  for  the 
real  interactions  of  things.  What  we  must  insist  is  that  such 
a  conception  means  something  more  than  the  phenomenal 
equivalents  with  which  it  deals;  that  it  serves  to  symbolize 
real  externality  or  distance  which  the  will  must  acknowledge, 
and  for  the  sake  of  which  it  invents  its  system  of  artificial 
equivalents.  Such  a  space  conception,  then,  just  because  it 
is  convenient,  must  point  to  some  characteristic  of  the  real 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        215 

world  which  furnishes  the  necessity  for  such  spreading  out,  how 
artificial  soever  the  ideal  equivalents  may  be. 

Geometric  Space 

It  is  in  connection  with  mathematics,  particularly  geometry, 
that  the  nature  of  systems  has  been  most  clearly  worked  out. 
Whitehead,  in  his  "  Introduction  to  Mathematics,"  speaks  of 
three  concepts  as  fundamental  in  mathematics  —  variables, 
form,  and  generality.  By  generality  is  meant  that  entities 
and  relations  can  be  taken  over  and  over  again  in  the  variety  of 
successive  and  simultaneous  contexts.  This  characteristic  we 
have  spoken  of  before  as  recurrence,  which  is  the  name  Poin- 
care  prefers.  It  does  justice  to  the  empirical  fact  that  ex- 
perience is  a  moving  quantity,  at  the  same  time  that  it  has  a 
certain  simultaneous  complexity. 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  aspect  of  elements  or  variables  in 
geometrical  constructions,  we  find  that  these  present  a  wide 
range  of  choice  to  the  geometrician.  Since  the  organizing  re- 
lation of  geometrical  order  is  that  of  before  and  after,  which 
implies  the  relation  of  between,  we  can  see  that  any  entities  which 
will  satisfy  this  relation  consistently  with  our  postulates  will 
serve  the  purpose.  Such  entities  may  be  points,  lines,  solids, 
or  numbers  in  accordance  with  our  convenience.  The  real 
numbers  furnish  a  mathematical  continuum  which  satisfies 
all  the  demands  of  geometrical  systems.  In  any  case,  our  units 
are  conventional  so  far  as  geometry  is  concerned.  It  is  true, 
indeed,  that  they  are  derived  from  experience  and  the  geo- 
metrician may,  for  the  time  being,  turn  psychologist.  He  may 
show,  as  Poincare  has  shown,  that  mathematical  research,  like 
all  research,  starts  with  intuition,  even  though  it  does  not  use 
intuition  as  a  criterion  of  its  validity.  Our  sense  space,  whether 
of  sight  or  of  active  touch,  does  furnish  us  a  manifold  which  can 
be  spread  out  in  various  dimensions  in  accordance  with  the 
direction  of  differences  implied.  In  the  case  of  our  sight  space, 
we  may  arrange  the  variations  of  the  pure  color  hues  from  red 
to  yellow,  yellow  to  green,  green  to  blue,  and  blue  to  red  along 
four  axes  so  as  to  form  a  square.  We  may  again  arrange 
our  grays  in  a  linear  dimension  from  the  darkest  black  to  the 
lightest  white.  We  may  also  vary  our  color  hues  as  regards  satu- 


216  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

ration  by  moving  them  along  the  linear  axis,  which  symbolizes 
the  variations  of  brightness.  Thus  our  artificial  scheme  for 
symbolizing  the  variations  of  light  sensations  gives  a  six- 
dimensional  manifold ;  but  it  is  not  geometry.  The  color  quali- 
ties are  not  mere  functions  of  position  in  a  series.  They  are 
physical  facts  with  a  character  and  extension  varying  with 
physical  (including  physiological)  conditions.  The  construc- 
tion of  series  is  an  after-thought.  It  is  the  qualities  which 
determine  the  series  and  not  the  series  the  qualities.  While 
there  is  psychological  continuity  in  the  graduated  series  of 
color  qualities  based  on  indistinguishables,  this  is  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  concept  of  mathematical  continuity.  A  finite 
manifold,  consisting  of  a  definite  number  of  qualitative  posi- 
tions, could  not  furnish  a  basis  for  geometrical  continuity. 
Moreover,  physical  colors  vary  with  displacement,  changing 
their  quality  with  the  direction  of  movement,  while  geometry 
demands  that  displacement  shall  make  no  difference  to  the 
entities  involved,  that  is,  it  assumes  free  mobility.  Nor  will 
the  situation  be  improved  if  we  take  the  actual  perspectives  of 
the  senses.  In  both  our  sight  and  our  touch  space,  we  must 
conceive  certain  qualitative  differences,  due  to  locality  in  the 
field,  while  geometry  assumes  a  homogeneous  space.  But  while 
the  constitution  of  our  sense  manifolds  does  not  make  it  possible 
to  use  them  as  bases  for  geometry,  it  is  still  true  that  they  are 
the  background  of  intuition  which  gives  meaning  to  our  ab- 
stractions; and  the  practical  value,  at  any  rate,  of  these  ab- 
stractions is  to  furnish  models  which  we  can  use  in  our  concrete 
sense  world. 

How  dependent  geometry  is  for  its  starting  point  upon  the 
world  of  intuition  can  easily  be  shown  by  an  examination  of 
the  three  general  axioms  which  underlie  all  geometry.  These 
may  be  stated,  for  our  purpose,  as  diversity  of  position  or  ex- 
ternality, free  mobility,  and  dimensionality.  In  each  case,  it 
is  the  background  of  intuition  which  gives  meaning  to  our 
abstractions.  Our  geometrical  positions  are,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, abstractions  from  our  sensations  of  movement,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  from  the  substantive  qualities  which  mark  the 
termini  of  these  movements  in  concrete  perception,  on  the  other 
hand.  We  can  abstract  from  the  specific  qualities,  and  we  have 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE         217 

then  the  pure  positions  which  have  nothing  as  such  to  differ- 
entiate them,  but  must  be  defined  entirely  with  reference  to 
their  external  relations.  Free  mobility  is  derived  in  the  first 
place  from  the  intuition  of  the  unimpeded  movements  of  our 
limbs,  however  much  we  must  abstract  from  this  consciousness 
to  get  our  pure  geometric  limit.  Dimensionality  is  first  of 
all  a  matter  of  the  necessity  of  our  biological  reactions  —  in- 
grained into  our  nervous  system  by  survival  selection,  and 
symbolized  by  the  three  spirit  levels  of  the  semicircular  canals, 
as  well  as  other  compensatory  organic  adjustments.  It  is 
clear  that  our  bodily  movements  are  a  basic  factor  in  the 
genesis  of  our  notion  of  space.  This  has  been  well  stated  by 
Poincare :  "For  a  being  completely  immovable  there  will  be 
neither  space  nor  geometry :  in  vain  would  exterior  objects  be 
displaced  about  him,  the  variations  which  these  displacements 
would  make  in  his  impressions  would  not  be  attributed  by  this 
being  to  changes  of  position,  but  to  simple  changes  of  state; 
this  being  would  have  no  means  of  distinguishing  these  two  sorts 
of  changes,  and  this  distinction,  fundamental  for  us,  would  have 
no  meaning  for  him."1 

Geometry,  today,  prefers  the  analytic  method,  in  deriving  its 
elements,  to  the  synthetic  method  used  by  Euclid.  The  syn- 
thetic method  starts  with  the  point  as  the  unit.  Two  points 
uniquely  determine  a  line,  three  points  determine  a  surface, 
and  four  points,  a  solid.  This  procedure  is  plainly  circular. 
Points  must  in  turn,  be  defined  as  determined  by  lines,  lines 
as  determined  by  surfaces,  and  surfaces  by  solids.  At  each 
step,  therefore,  we  presuppose  the  very  entity  which  we  are  to 
define.  We  cannot  possibly  derive  our  more  complex  units 
from  the  simpler  ones.  Cay  ley  proposed  to  remedy  this  diffi- 
culty by  introducing  the  concept  of  motion.  By  moving  a 
point,  we  get  a  line,  by  moving  a  line,  we  get  a  plane,  by  moving 
a  plane,  we  get  a  solid.  This  amounts,  however,  to  our  falling 
back  upon  our  concrete  intuition  of  the  empirical  solid.  Having 
abstracted  from  its  empirical  character  and  conceiving  it  as  a 
rigid  solid,  we  can  derive  from  this  the  concept  of  surfaces  as  its 
abstract  boundaries,  we  can  conceive  lines  as  the  abstract 
boundaries  of  surfaces,  and  points  as  the  abstract  boundaries 

1  "The  Value  of  Science,"  p.  48. 


218  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

of  lines.  But  in  any  case,  our  geometrical  entities  are  concep- 
tual limits,  and  for  geometrical  purposes  may  be  taken  as  con- 
ventions, just  as  other  sciences  take  a  certain  starting  point 
for  granted.  The  derivation  of  the  elements  is  primarily  a 
psychological  question.  This  is  equally  true  of  the  socalled 
a  priori  character  of  our  fundamental  geometric  categories. 
We  may  have  reason  to  believe  that  such  geometric  concepts 
as  externality  and  the  straight  line  have  an  organic  basis,  and 
are  in  this  sense  presuppositions  of  our  perceptual  adjustments, 
but  this  is  a  matter  for  psychology  to  determine.  For  geometry, 
they  are  conventions  to  be  defined  in  its  own  way,  and  for 
its  own  purposes. 

It  may  be  well  to  point  out  that  the  socalled  non-Euclidean 
geometries  are  as  dependent  upon  our  concrete  intuition  for 
their  content  as  are  Euclidean  geometries.  Poincare  has  shown 
that  the  so-called  Euclidean  spaces  can  always  be  translated 
into  terms  of  Euclidean  geometry.  This  preestablished  har- 
mony is  due  simply  to  the  fact  that  the  various  geometrical 
systems,  in  so  far  as  they  stand  for  real  content,  are  all  abstrac- 
tions from  our  perceptual  space  experience.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  experience  gives  us  all  sorts  of  curvature.  The  non- 
Euclidean  geometries,  based  upon  positive  or  negative  curva- 
ture, have  their  rise  as  truly  in  experience  as  the  Euclidean 
elements,  and  would  even  seem  to  have  the  perceptual  advan- 
tage since  such  elements  as  straight  lines  are  not  verifiable  in 
the  world  of  perception.  Which  type  of  geometry  we  shall 
use  for  practical  purposes  is  of  course  a  question  of  convenience 
for  purposes  of  instrumental  description.  And  here,  the  Eucli- 
dean seems  to  possess  the  advantage.  So  far  as  the  variation 
of  dimensions  is  concerned,  we  can  find  the  basis  for  four  or 
more  dimensions  in  our  actual  experience  even  though  our 
physical  space  seems  determinable  by  three  systems  of  coor- 
dinates. Poincare  shows  that,  if,  with  the  variations  in  space, 
we  always  had  variations  in  temperature,  the  latter  would 
furnish  the  basis  for  another  system  of  coordinates.  The 
number  system,  with  its  complexity  of  qualitative  variations, 
gives  us  the  basis  for  an  indefinite  number  of  dimensions.  So 
long  as  we  emphasize  merely  the  order  character  of  our  space 
concepts,  the  number  of  dimensions  should  furnish  no  par- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        219 

ticular  difficulty ;  and  the  number  three  is  no  longer  particularly 
sacred.  Geometric  space  is  anything  that  thought  and  imag- 
ination choose  to  constitute  it.  On  its  amorphous  background, 
we  can  construct  our  systems  at  will  in  accordance  with  our 
postulates. 

As  regards  its  method,  geometric  space  is  simply  a  matter  of 
logic.  If  we  choose  to  make  certain  assumptions,  a  logical 
system  can  be  built  upon  these.  It  may  be  of  one,  two,  three, 
or  of  n  dimensions;  it  may  be  qualitative  or  quantitative; 
it  may  presuppose  any  kind  of  curvature  or  the  absence  of  it ; 
it  involves  as  many  axioms  as  we  choose  to  have ;  these  may 
be  less,  or  they  may  be  more  than  those  of  Euclid,  though  as 
a  matter  of  nomenclature,  the  question  may  be  raised  as  to 
how  far  the  term  geometry  should  be  applied  to  such  construc- 
tions. It  is  simply  a  display  of  poetic  imagination  within  the 
self-imposed  rules  of  logic.  It  is  no  more  the  concern  of  the 
philosopher  than  any  other  product  of  poetic  inventiveness, 
"Alice  in  Wonderland,"  for  example.  But,  however  much 
geometry  may  outstrip  our  humble  sense  world  in  its  abstract 
procedure,  and  however  imposing  may  be  the  logic  of  its  method, 
it  must  always  keep  humble  by  remembering  that  it  derives  its 
content  from  experience;  and  that  however  unlimited  may 
be  its  field,  once  it  has  set  sail  on  the  sea  of  pure  abstraction, 
it  only  touches  reality  again  when  it  returns  to  the  necessities 
of  concrete  activity.  And  apart  from  its  play  value  as  a  logical 
game,  it  must  also  prove  an  instrument  in  the  realization  of  our 
purposes  in  the  actual  world.  Within  their  own  abstract 
domain,  the  mathematical  ideals  are  posited  as  limits  by  our 
constructive  will,  and  have  no  reality  except  as  we  thus  posit 
them. 

The  critical  modern  study  of  geometry,  however,  if  it  has 
thrown  no  new  light  on  the  nature  of  things,  has  thrown  a  great 
deal  of  light  on  the  nature  of  thought.  On  the  critical  side  it 
has  had  an  immense  value  as  a  solvent  in  destroying  not  only 
mathematical  dogmatism,  which  was  the  longest  to  hold  out 
against  the  critical  spirit,  but  dogmatism  as  regards  other 
"eternal  verities"  as  well,  which  pointed  to  the  axioms  of 
geometry  as  their  type  and  their  warrant  alike.  The  old 
bulwark  of  a  priorism  has  at  last  been  shattered.  On  its  con- 


220  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

structive  side,  its  chief  contribution  has  been  the  clearer  con- 
sciousness of  the  nature  of  systems. 

If  we  examine  a  little  more  closely  into  the  form  of  geometric 
systems,  we  find  that  the  postulates  which  we  assume  must 
satisfy  the  following  criteria  of  logical  definition :  in  the  first 
place,  they  must  be  independent,  i.e.  they  must  not  overlap 
each  other,  and  they  must  be  capable  of  being  taken  as  simple 
for  the  purpose  in  question.  In  the  second  place,  they  must 
be  consistent  with  each  other.  We  cannot  conceive  a  contra- 
dictory world.  In  the  third  place,  they  must  be  sufficient. 
They  must  be  capable  of  uniquely  determining  the  system  which 
we  have  set  ourselves  to  construct. 

If  we  try  to  determine  now  what  geometric  postulates  will 
satisfy  these  criteria,  we  must  be  guided  here  by  the  specific 
purpose  that  thought  sets  itself.  In  other  words,  it  depends 
on  what  sort  of  geometry  we  want.  There  are  some  axioms, 
however,  that  seem  to  be  implied  in  all  geometric  constructions. 
These,  we  have  seen,  are  the  axioms  of  discrete  or  external 
positions;  of  free  mobility  or  displacement  without  change  of 
state,  i.e.  with  no  other  difference  than  change  in  position; 
and  dimensionality  or  the  possibility  of  ordering  our  material 
into  different  series.  Besides  these  general  characteristics, 
each  system  of  geometry  adds  its  own  unique  characteristics. 
Thus  metric  geometry  implies  the  straight  line.  Euclidean 
geometry  adds  certain  empirical  axioms  which  are  borrowed 
from  the  physical  space,  in  which  we  make  our  predictions  and 
physical  experiments.  Euclid's  definition  of  the  straight  line 
as  the  shortest  distance  between  two  points,  his  axiom  of 
parallels,  his  axiom  of  three  dimensions,  his  definition  that 
two  straight  lines  cannot  inclose  a  space  —  these  must  be 
treated  as  empirical  laws  in  the  sense  that,  while  they  seem  to 
hold  within  our  physical  space,  they  are  not  essential  to  metric 
geometry  in  general.  There  seems  to  be  no  reason,  however, 
why  they  should  not  be  treated  as  conventions,  and  be  used 
as  a  legitimate  basis  for  geometric  construction. 

It  must  be  clear  now  that  the  only  necessity  which  geom- 
etry knows  is  the  necessity  of  logic.  If  we  choose  to  work 
out  a  certain  type  of  system,  we  are  bound  accordingly 
by  logical  rules  to  see  to  it  that  our  postulates  fulfill  the 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        221 

proper  logical  criteria  within  the  constitution  which  we  have 
selected. 

So  far  as  geometry  is  concerned,  the  temporal  order  presents 
no  unique  problem.  If  we  spatialize  it,  as  has  commonly  been 
done,  into  a  line,  then  whatever  holds  for  linear  space,  whether 
taken  qualitatively  or  quantitatively,  would  hold  for  the 
spatialized  temporal  series.  So  long  as  we  conceive  the  tem- 
poral order  as  an  abstraction  within  which  the  present  is  merely 
a  point  which  is  posited  by  our  thought,  and  from  which  we 
can  proceed  indifferently  either  backward  or  forward,  as  within 
geometric  space,  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not  geo- 
metrize  our  temporal  order.  It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out 
that  this  conception  is  entirely  inadequate  to  the  actual  tem- 
poral world  where  movement  implies  more  than  mere  change 
of  position  in  a  series,  and  where  empirical  novelties  and  con- 
stancies become  the  object  of  interest.  But  geometry  is  no 
more  concerned  with  the  real  temporal  world  than  with  the 
real  spatial  world.  Its  game  is  a  game  of  logic.  It  is  true  that 
the  physical  scientist  can  select  among  mathematical  models 
such  as  will  enable  him  to  manipulate  or  anticipate  his  facts. 
Mathematics  does  furnish  a  convenient  framework  for  em- 
pirical science.  But  this  is  not  the  concern  of  pure  mathe- 
matics, and  is  often  best  accomplished  when  most  remote  from 
the  intent  of  the  mathematician.  It  goes  to  show  that  our 
world  is  on  the  whole  a  logical  world,  or  at  any  rate,  a  world 
where  the  ideals  of  logic  are  relevant. 

We  may  agree  with  Keyser  that,  in  whatever  sense  Euclidean 
geometry  can  be  said  to  exist,  in  the  same  sense  can  the  other 
types  of  geometry,  such  as  n-dimensional,  be  said  to  exist.  But 
this  amounts  to  saying  that  the  reality  of  geometry  is  merely 
that  of  abstract  logic,  and  that  existence  for  geometry  means 
merely  the  consistency  of  propositions  with  each  other,  and 
with  the  postulates  of  the  special  system.  It  has  nothing  to 
do  with  empirical  existence.  To  quote  from  Whitehead : 
"All  branches  of  pure  mathematics  deal  merely  with  types  of 
relations.  Thus,  the  fundamental  ideas  of  geometry  (e.g.  those 
of  points  and  of  straight  lines}  are  not  ideas  of  determinate  en- 
tities, but  of  any  entities  for  which  the  axioms  are  true.  .  .  . 
They  do  not  refer  to  a  determinate  subject.  .  .  .  The  axioms 


222  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

are  prepositional  functions.  When  a  set  of  axioms  is  given, 
we  can  ask  (1)  whether  they  are  consistent,  (2)  whether 
their  existence  theorem  is  proved,  (3)  whether  they  are 
independent."  1 

We  may  agree  with  Kant  to  the  extent  of  regarding  geometric 
space  as  ideal.  Its  form  is  the  form  of  thought  itself ;  and  only 
in  this  sense  does  it  predetermine  our  investigations.  Looked 
upon  as  instrumental  to  our  empirical  world,  mathematics  serves 
beautifully  to  illustrate  the  three  meanings  of  the  term  ideal. 
Ideal  may  mean  an  a  posteriori  and  convenient  fiction.  This 
is  illustrated  in  such  conceptions  as  the  trajectory  of  motion, 
and  in  Kepler's  squares.  The  movement  of  the  cannon  ball 
does  not  really  consist  in  the  trajectory,  though  it  is  convenient 
for  us  to  conceive  such  a  line  in  space  for  its  description.  In  the 
real  movement  there  is  the  impulse  which  spends  itself,  and 
which,  on  the  plate  of  our  memory,  or  perhaps  of  the  physical 
camera,  leaves  the  record  of  a  path  in  space.  The  movement 
itself  is  a  unitary  affair,  and  cannot  be  dealt  with  except  for 
purely  artificial  purposes,  as  a  series  of  static  positions.  Kep- 
ler's laws  have  been  a  convenient  fiction  for  describing  real 
planetary  motions ;  and,  latterly,  we  have  come  to  look  upon 
the  law  of  gravitation  as  a  convenient  approximation.  Again, 
the  ideal  may  be  an  abstraction  from  the  real  context.  The 
geometric  constellations  may  be  a  real  aspect  of  the  dynamic 
relations.  The  straight  line  seems  to  be  a  reality  in  the  world 
of  physical  motion.  Light  seems  to  move  in  straight  lines ;  and 
so  do  all  known  entities,  except  in  so  far  as  they  are  influenced 
from  their  direction  by  other  interfering  energies.  Geometric 
distances  are  real  aspects  of  the  physical  world,  for  energies 
vary  with  the  distance.  Geometric  shapes  and  numerical  ratios 
must  be  taken  account  of  in  the  empirical  description  of  our 
world.  Even  linear  direction  must  be  taken  as  real,  an  aspect 
of  an  energy  system,  as  is  plainly  seen,  for  example,  in  the  case 
of  inertia.  Energies  oppose  less  inertia  to  energies  acting  at 
the  right  angle  to  their  direction  than  to  those  that  act  in  an 
opposite  direction.  It  is  only  as  conceptual  abstractions  that 
such  properties  become  conventional  and  inert.  The  concep- 
tual ax  does  not  cut  real  wood  nor  do  our  conceptual  shapes, 

1  Article,  "Geometry  (VII),"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  llth  ed. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND   GEOMETRIC   SPACE        223 

lines,  and  patterns  effect  physical  changes.  As  aspects,  how- 
ever, of  energy  systems,  they  become  both  real  and  effective. 
Descartes  was  not  wrong  in  emphasizing  the  reality  of  the 
geometric  characteristics  of  things.  His  error  lay  in  neglecting 
other  characteristics  such  as  inertia.  Finally,  the  ideal  may 
figure  as  a  formal  limit  to  the  empirical  world.  Our  empirical 
observations  may  only  approximate  to  such  limits;  and  yet 
we  are  bound  by  the  constitution  of  our  minds  to  postulate 
them;  and  they  may  indeed,  as  Plato  pointed  out,  be  more 
real  than  our  halting  empirical  approximations.  In  all  three 
cases  of  the  term  ideal,  mathematics  seems  to  play  a  part  in 
our  dealing  with  the  facts  of  our  experience,  —  sometimes  as 
a  purely  instrumental  fiction  in  the  service  of  our  description  ; 
sometimes  as  abstract  though  real  relations  within  our  world  ; 
sometimes  as  certain  logical  and  aesthetic  norms  which  we  de- 
mand that  the  universe  shall  respect.  In  the  broad  sense  that 
the  universe  is  a  coherent  and  logical  world,  we  may  say  that 
the  universe  geometrizes,  however  faulty  may  prove  our  own 
provisional  generalizations. 

The  most  brilliant  of  modern  idealists  has  striven  to  give 
geometric  perspective  space  a  real  existence  in  his  final  concep- 
tion of  reality.  In  Fichte's  "New  Exposition  of  the  Science 
of  Knowledge,"  space  becomes  the  "permanent,  absolute  con- 
templation," "which,  however,  presupposes  itself  as  absolutely 
being  to  itself  according  to  the  demonstrated  law  of  the  reflec- 
tion of  consciousness.  It  is  the  on-itself-reposing,  firm  glance 
of  intelligence,  the  resting  immanent  light,  the  eternal  eye 
in-itself,  and  for-itself."  And  again:  "The  substantial,  solid 
and  resting  space  is,  according  to  the  above,  the  original  light, 
before  all  actual  knowledge,  only  thinkable  and  intelligible, 
but  not  visible,  and  not  to  be  contemplated,  as  produced  through 
freedom."  The  construction  of  space  is  secondary,  "  a  taking 
hold  of  itself  on  the  part  of  light,  a  self-penetration  of  light, 
ever  from  one  point  and  realized  within  knowledge  itself;  a 
secondary  condition  of  light,  which,  for  the  sake  of  distinguish- 
ing it,  we  should  term  clearness,  the  act  enlightening."  And 
truly  it  needs  enlightening.  What  is  significant  for  our  pur- 
pose is  that  space  becomes  for  Fichte  the  self-intuitive  eternal 
system  of  truth,  which  for  him  amounts  to  reality.  It  is  not 


224  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

merely  the  type  of  the  eternal,  but  it  is  the  eternal ;  not  merely 
the  valid,  but  the  real.  Perhaps  Fichte  is  right,  that  if  we  are 
to  translate  space  into  terms  of  one  eternal  self-contemplation, 
such  must  be  its  meaning.  But  that  loses  whatever  of  meaning 
space  has  for  us.  It  reduces  it  to  a  mere  spaceless  eternal 
perspective. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  NATURE  OF  REAL  SPACE 

WE  have,  in  the  previous  chapter,  examined  into  the  pre- 
suppositions of  space  construction,  and  found  that  these  must 
be  expressed  first  of  all  in  biological  terms.  We  next  took 
up  the  ontogenetic  side  of  our  space  perception,  and  found 
that  the  content,  in  so  far  as  it  exists,  is  probably  concomitant 
to  the  going  on  of  the  growth  process,  determined  by  the  phylo- 
genetic  tendencies,  and  intra-  and  extra-organic  stimuli. 
What  actual  content  there  is,  moreover,  must  be  determined 
by  statistical  inquiry,  and  not  a  priori.  We  then  examined 
into  geometrical  construction,  and  found  this  to  be  a  matter 
of  logic,  and  to  be  conducted  as  any  free  logical  inquiry.  The 
ideals,  however,  of  mathematics,  as  other  ideals,  seem  to  have 
a  phylogenetic  basis.  Lastly,  we  examined  into  the  conception 
of  space,  as  perspective,  by  metaphysical  idealism.  When 
regarded  as  phenomenal,  we  had  no  reason  to  quarrel  with  this 
view.  When,  however,  translated  into  terms  of  absolute 
idealism,  as  by  Fichte,  space  loses  its  significance. 

We  must  now  turn  to  the  other  aspect  of  our  concept,  and 
try  to  discover  what  real  space  means,  or  what  difference  it 
makes  in  our  accounting  for  the  facts  of  experience.  The 
series  aspect  of  space,  we  have  agreed,  is  ideal  construction. 
Points  exist  only  as  we  posit  them  as  the  ideal  pegs  on  which 
we  hang  our  qualitative  world.  To  make  up  a  real  world  of 
such  ideal  points,  is  absolute  nonsense.  But  what  remains 
after  we  abstract  from  this  series  character?  Nothing  at  all, 
some  would  answer.  Zeno  is  right  that  space  is  no  thing. 
Neither  are  the  positions  in  space  things.  They  are  our  ideal 
abstractions  for  our  convenience.  But  though  space  is  no 
thing,  we  shall  try  to  show  that  it  is  not  a  merely  ideal  nothing, 
but  a  real  entity  which  conditions  not  only  subjective  construc- 
tion, but  real  action  as  well. 

225 


226  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Proofs  of  the  Existence  of  Space 

First  of  all,  such  a  space  zero  is  perfectly  conceivable.  The 
modern  study  of  number  has  shown  us  that  the  conception  of 
nothing  does  not  equal  no  conception.  The  zero  of  the  number 
series  is  of  basic  importance  in  the  whole  conception  of  number ; 
and  as  the  number  series  is  not  intelligible  without  it,  the  number 
zero  possesses  all  the  reality  of  the  series  which  it  limits.  But 
we  can  conceive  pure  space,  as  we  conceive  the  number  zero, 
as  a  limit  by  abstracting  from  the  contents  of  space  or  the  things 
in  space.  Hence,  space  must  be  as  real  as  the  things  in  space. 
It  is  a  matter  of  surprise  that  while  the  importance  of  the  zero 
concept  for  number  has  received  so  much  attention  in  recent 
times,  the  importance  of  the  space  zero,  which  both  chronologi- 
cally and  ontologically  is  more  fundamental,  should  have  been 
ignored.  But  the  reason  for  this  can  be  found  in  the  fact  that, 
since  Kant,  thought  has  been  more  interested  in  its  own  ma- 
chinery than  in  its  objective  conditions. 

It  is  Parmenides  who  first  builds  a  philosophy  on  the  impossi- 
bility of  conceiving  empty  space,  and,  consistently  with  that, 
outlaws  motion.  Failing  to  form  a  picture  of  pure  space,  he 
would  forever  taboo  it  as  "unspeakable."  We  can  have  only 
filled  space,  the  homogeneous,  spherical  plenum.  "  There  is 
no  more  of  it  (being)  in  one  place  than  in  another,  to  hinder  it 
from  holding  together,  nor  less  of  it,  but  everything  is  full  of 
what  is.  Wherefore  all  holds  together ;  for  what  is,  is  in  con- 
tact with  what  is."  Empirical  proof,  Parmenides  would  scorn ; 
the  mere  inconceivability  is  enough.  And  so  originated  the 
thesis :  nature  abhors  a  vacuum,  which  certainly  does  not 
seem  to  be  the  case  with  the  people's  minds  who  have  un- 
questioningly  accepted  this  a  priori  statement  in  spite  of  the 
facts  to  the  contrary. 

I  have  pointed  out  elsewhere  that  a  priori  inconceivability 
as  regards  existence  is  a  matter  of  custom.  It  was  once  in- 
conceivable that  men  could  sail  outside  the  Pillars  of  Hercules ; 
that  there  could  be  more  than  seven  planets,  etc.  But  in  all 
those  cases,  a  priori  inconceivability  has  given  way  to  facts. 
And  so  it  must  in  regard  to  pure  space.  While  we  have 
invented  media  with  all  sorts  of  contradictory  properties  to 


THE   NATURE   OF   REAL   SPACE  227 

save  our  customary  conception  of  motion  as  mechanical  im- 
pact, we  have  finally  come  to  the  realization  that  the  facts  are 
simpler  than  our  theories,  and  that  if  we  dispense  with  our 
hypothetical  media,  we  shall  have  all  the  results  without  absurd 
assumptions.  As  Professor  L.  T.  More  says  :  "  Direct  evidence 
shows  that  kinetic  energy  is  propagated  through  what  experi- 
mentally must  be  regarded  as  empty  space.  This  energy, 
called  heat  and  light,  passes  to  the  earth  from  the  sun,  but  is 
neither  absorbed  nor  otherwise  modified,  until  ponderable 
matter  is  encountered."  l  Pragmatically,  space  must  be  known 
through  the  difference  it  makes  to  the  energies  which  traverse 
it.  And  this  difference  is  a  real  difference,  distinct  from  energetic 
reactions.  We  have  passed  from  the  stage  of  judging  space 
a  priori,  to  determining  its  existence  and  character  by  the 
actual  difference  it  makes  to  behavior.  It  might  be  remarked, 
however,  that  if  motion  is  a  priori  inconceivable  without  an 
absolute  plenum,  it  is  certainly  a  priori  inconceivable  in  such  a 
plenum  —  unless  the  plenum  makes  no  difference,  and  then  it 
is  pragmatically  indistinguishable  from  pure  space,  and  scien- 
tifically superfluous.  A  relative  plenum,  the  evidence  indicates 
—  space  shot  through  with  energies,  where,  however,  we  can  both 
theoretically  and  physically  abstract  from  the  energies,  and 
approximate  pure  space.  One  thing  is  certain,  on  no  theory 
of  the  physical  world  can  we  get  rid  of  the  problem  of  energetic 
diversity,  and  of  empirical  distance  as  making  a  difference  to 
interaction,  whether  it  be  in  our  conceptions  of  the  constitution 
of  the  stellar  constellations,  or  of  the  minute  energetic  constella- 
tions of  electric  charges  within  the  atom.  In  any  case  energy 
does  not  abhor  spatial  distance,  but  implies  it. 

Once  having  shown  the  conceivability  of  pure  space,  we  must 
prove  its  existence,  as  we  prove  the  reality  of  any  other  entity, 
by  showing  its  convenience  for  describing  the  facts  of  experience. 
The  criterion  of  the  reality  of  our  concepts  is  everywhere  the 
same:  Does  the  concept  work?  Does  it  make  experience 
simple,  consistent,  and  intelligible?  Must  we  act  as  if  it  were 
so?  We  must  not  start  by  assuming  space  to  be  a  thing-in- 
itself,  but  judge  it  by  its  properties  as  required  by  practical 
experience.  How  blind  the  dogmatic  method  can  make  us  is 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  816. 


228  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

well  illustrated  by  Russell:  " Assuming  that  there  is  physical 
space,  and  that  it  does  correspond  to  private  space,  what  can 
we  know  about  it?  We  can  know  only  what  is  required,  in 
order  to  secure  the  correspondence.  That  is  to  say,  we  can 
know  nothing  of  what  it  is  like  in  itself,  but  we  can  know  the 
sort  of  arrangement  of  physical  objects  which  results  from  their 
spatial  relations."  l  But  when  we  know  this,  don't  we  know 
the  nature  of  space? 

Kant  argues  that  we  cannot  prove  the  existence  of  empty 
space,  because  we  can  have  no  intuition  of  empty  space  :  "  We 
see,  therefore,  that  experience  can  never  supply  a  proof  of 
empty  space  or  empty  time,  because  the  total  absence  of  reality 
in  a  sensuous  intuition  can  itself  never  be  perceived,  neither 
can  it  be  deduced  from  any  phenomenon  whatsoever,  and  from 
the  difference  of  degree  in  its  reality ;  nor  ought  it  ever  to  be 
admitted  in  explanation  of  it.  ...  As  every  reality  has  its 
degree  which  may  diminish  by  infinite  degrees  down  to  the 
nothing  or  void,  there  must  be  infinitely  differing  degrees  in 
which  space  and  time  are  filled."  2  If  space  is  not  a  thing,  it 
must  be  clear  that  pure  space  could  not  be  perceived,  since  per- 
ception is  an  energetic  relation  of  stimulus  and  organism.  Nor 
could  we  note  degrees  of  its  presence  or  absence,  since  it  is  not 
an  energetic  quantity.  We  can,  however,  verify  it  through 
experience  indirectly,  as  we  succeed  in  abstracting  from  the 
energies  which  ordinarily  fill  it.  The  vacuum  of  the  receiver 
is  noticed  by  the  absence  of  sound.  The  infinite  degrees 
which  we  must  pass  through  to  arrive  at  the  absence  of  any 
energy  are  a  matter  of  mathematical  description,  and  do  not 
prevent  us  from  actually  exhausting  the  real  energies. 

We  must  conceive  of  pure  space  as  the  precondition  of  filled 
space,  as  the  limit  of  exhaustion,  which,  moreover,  we  can 
approximately  attain.  If  by  exhaustion,  we  could  get  the 
space  zero  without  content  or  resistance,  it  must  have  been 
real  all  the  while.  It  is  not  necessary  to  the  reality  of  pure 
space  that  it  should  actually  exist  separately  or  empty.  We 
cannot  get  the  quality  of  blue  separate  from  all  other  facts, 

1  Bertrand  Russell,  "The  Problems  of  Philosophy,"  p.  49. 

2  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  Transcendental  Analytic  :  Anticipations  of  Per- 
ception, p.  141,  Max  Miiller's  translation. 


THE   NATURE    OP   REAL   SPACE  229 

yet  we  do  not  therefore  deny  its  existence.  If  we  can  approxi- 
mate pure  space  as  a  limit,  it  must  be  just  as  real  as  though 
it  existed  separately.  The  nearer  we  succeed  in  such  abstrac- 
tion, the  better  we  can  ascertain  the  properties  of  pure  space. 
These  properties  we  can  even  now  predict  as  limits.  It  is 
convenient,  therefore,  to  conceive  of  pure  space,  whether 
empty  or  filled.  Only  with  reference  to  it  can  relative  emptiness 
or  relative  resistance  have  meaning.  To  illustrate,  let  us  as- 
sume that  hydrogen  gas  is  the  only  gas  that  passes  through 
platinum.  Suppose,  then,  that  we  have  a  vessel  of  platinum 
filled  with  pure  hydrogen  gas.  Let  this  escape,  and  what  is 
left? 

The  usefulness  of  the  concept  of  spatial  intervals  within  the 
minute  structure  of  the  atom  itself  has  recently  been  shown 
by  Professor  T.  W.  Richards.  That  the  atom  is  not  the  absolute 
plenum  which  Democritus  took  it  to  be,  but  is  a  composite 
constellation,  has  been  proved  from  radio-active  phenomena. 
Professor  Richards  proves  the  same  from  the  simple  facts 
of  the  compressibility  of  solids.  To  quote  his  own  statement : 
"The  idea  that  atoms  may  be  compressible  receives  striking 
confirmation  from  a  recent  investigation  concerning  the  small 
effect  of  low  temperatures  on  the  compressibility  of  metals. 
The  average  compressibility  of  aluminum,  iron,  copper,  silver, 
and  platinum  falls  off  only  seven  per  cent,  between  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  room,  and  that  of  liquid  air.  Extrapolation  of  the 
curves  indicates  that  at  the  absolute  zero,  very  little  further 
diminution  should  occur.  So  far  as  we  can  guess,  therefore, 
the  hard  metals  are  almost  as  compressible  at  the  absolute  zero 
as  at  room  temperatures.  But  at  the  absolute  zero,  all  heat- 
vibration  is  supposed  to  stop;  hence  this  remaining  com- 
pressibility must  needs  be  ascribed  to  the  atoms  themselves/'1 

The  conception  of  zero  space  has  proved  convenient  as  a 
limit  in  conceiving  Newton's  first  law  of  motion.  While  this 
law  is  an  abstraction,  it  must  be  remembered  that  such  ab- 
traction  is  empirically  possible  to  a  certain  extent.  The  ab- 
straction, therefore,  is  not  merely  ideal.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  real  conditions  which  we  must  deal  with  in  treating  of 
resistance  and  motion.  I  cannot  see  how  a  merely  ideal  limit 

1  Address  before  London  Chemical  Society,  1911. 


230  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

could  make  any  difference  to  actual  movement.  Mathematical 
points,  lines,  and  surfaces,  while  legitimate  abstractions,  neither 
obstruct  nor  facilitate  movement.  They  only  exist  in  our 
ideal  dimension.  Even  if  we  have  not  been  able  to  get  abso- 
lutely empty  space,  we  can,  as  already  shown,  approximate  to  it 
and  predict  definitely  what  would  happen  if  we  could  get  it. 
The  only  problem  is :  Are  we  compelled  to  assume  such  an 
entity  in  order  to  account  for  the  facts  of  experience?  By 
postulating  pure  space,  we  find  it  easier  at  any  rate  to  account 
for  the  forms  of  motion  as  they  actually  take  place  owing 
to  the  resistance  and  diversity  of  the  physical  world.  The 
convenience  of  the  conception  must  indicate  that  it  has  a 
foundation  in  the  real,  otherwise  it  could  not  be  empirically 
approximated  as  well  as  hypothetically  useful.  It  is  the  real 
limit  which  makes  our  conception  relevant. 

Even  geometry  in  assuming  free  mobility  as  one  of  its  few 
remaining  axioms,  shows  that  it  means  by  space  something 
more  than  series,  for  free  mobility  is  the  very  precondition  of 
space  construction.  If,  after  abstracting  from  things,  space 
itself  offered  resistance,  geometry  would  not  be  possible.  Even 
in  geometry,  therefore,  pure  space  is  presupposed  as  objective 
to  serial  construction. 

The  conception  of  space  distance  cannot  be  explained  as  a 
property,  either  of  things  or  of  selves,  and  yet  conditions  the 
actions  of  things.  By  distance,  I  do  not  presuppose  our  geomet- 
rical concepts  such  as  the  straight  line.  A  straight  stick  is  more 
convenient  than  a  crooked  stick  for  social  measurements,  but 
in  either  case,  we  presuppose  the  externality,  or  side-by-side- 
ness,  of  perceptual  processes.  A  yard  stick,  while  a  convenient 
unit,  does  not  create  the  distance  it  measures.  This  differs, 
moreover,  from  the  ideal  distance  or  stretch  in  our  conception 
of  series,  for  example.  Distance  transferred  to  mental  processes 
and  their  externality  is  only  a  figure  of  speech.  Space  distance 
is  the  only  real  distance  we  can  conceive.  All  other  distance 
or  stretch  depends  upon  this.  Number  distance  or  tone  distance 
is  a  qualitative  conception,  and  merely  means  degree  of  differ- 
ence, or  intervals  in  an  order  series.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with 
space,  except  as  for  convenience  we  spread  out  our  qualitative 
differences  in  space.  Except  for  space  distance,  however,  all 


THE   NATURE    OF   REAL   SPACE  231 

perceptual  things  would  have  to  coalesce  or  interpenetrate. 
Pure  space,  then,  must  be  real,  if  distance  must  be  conceived 
as  real. 

Without  the  conception  of  distance,  both  acceleration  and 
the  limitations  of  intersubjective  communication  become  un- 
intelligible. Wills,  appreciative  selves,  while  not  extended,  are 
limited  by  conditions  which  must  be  met  and  cannot  simply 
be  brushed  aside  as  illusions.  Here  lies  the  difference  between 
real  distance,  and  the  derivative  conception  of  distance  or 
stretch  in  series  such  as  the  number  and  tonal  series.  In  the 
latter  case,  the  distance  or  stretch  is  determined  by  the  will, 
is  comprised  within  its  purpose.  A  long  stretch  or  a  short 
stretch  will  serve  equally  well  to  spread  out  its  contents,  so  as 
to  indicate  the  direction  of  difference;  and  as  the  termini  are 
comprehended  within  the  will's  own  positing,  they  put  no 
condition  upon  the  will  as  regards  passing  from  one  to  the  other. 
They  are  only  ideally  external  within  a  unity  of  consciousness 
which  claims  them  equally  and  simul.  Not  so  with  space 
distance.  Here  the  distance  which  separates  friends  in  America 
and  Europe,  and  limits  their  intercourse  is  not  the  creature 
of  their  ideal  positing  simply ;  the  ideal  bridging  of  it  does  not 
remove  the  limitation  to  the  will  as  in  the  case  of  two  points 
in  a  series.  If  it  is  posited  by  them,  it  is  because  they  are 
compelled  to  do  so,  and  no  enlightenment  from  Kantian  idealists 
serves  to  sweep  away  the  limitation.  In  short,  what  makes 
other  egos  and  things  objective  to  me,  viz.,  their  independence 
of  my  subjective  purposes,  makes  also  space  as  distance  ob- 
jectively real  to  me.  As  I  must  acknowledge  other  egos,  so 
in  order  to  realize  my  practical  purposes,  I  must  acknowledge 
space.  Space  is  the  condition  of  the  externality  of  egos,  and 
of  things,  too,  whether  they  can  be  acknowledged  as  egos  or  not. 
It  is  not  a  subjective,  but  an  inter-subjective  condition,  limit- 
ing the  communication  and  cooperation  of  egos.  Within  the 
ego,  space  exists  at  most  only  figuratively,  as  when  we  speak 
of  the  space  of  our  ideas. 

We  often  speak,  in  this  age  of  electricity,  of  annihilating  dis- 
tance. It  is  true  that  social  sympathy  and  unity  are  possible 
in  this  age  to  an  extent  they  never  have  been  before.  Human- 
ity, by  means  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone,  can  live  a  common 


232  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

life  to  a  marvelous  degree.  And  yet  it  is  loose  language  even 
so  to  speak  of  the  annihilation  of  distance,  for  distance  does 
make  a  decidedly  measurable  difference  to  our  communication. 
While  the  conditions  of  social  unities  have  altered  vastly  since 
the  days  of  the  proximity  of  tribal  life,  still  it  makes  a  differ- 
ence to  the  kind  of  relations  we  can  have  with  each  other  that 
we  are  separated  by  distance. 

Nor  can  we  regard  space  as  subjective,  and  motion  as  objec- 
tive, the  halfway  house  of  some  philosophers.  If  we  regard 
motion  and  change  as  objective,  we  have  to  regard  space  as 
objective.  This  is  true  of  qualitative  change  as  well  as  quanti- 
tative, as  the  former  too  would  be  impossible  without  some 
kind  of  pluralism  and  externality.  Melissos  saw  deeper  than 
he  knew  when  he  maintained  that  if  there  is  rearrangement, 
there  must  be  empty  space,  even  though  he  supposed  the  con- 
clusion to  be  absurd  (taboo  it  really  had  become,  and  has  been 
mostly  since)  and  so  returned  to  the  solid  block  universe  of 
Parmenides.  This  he  conceived  as  unlimited  to  exclude  empty 
space  from  the  outside. 

In  explaining  motion,  we  have  found  the  conception  of  pure 
space  useful  in  two  ways.  First,  it  makes  it  possible  to  ab- 
stract from  bodies  and  resistance,  and  so  to  state  Newton's 
first  law  of  motion.  Secondly,  it  gives  us  the  possibility  of 
objective  distance,  which  cannot  be  reduced  to  the  properties 
of  things.  Reactions  of  things,  while  they  are  determined  by 
the  properties  of  things,  also  vary  with  distance,  which  there- 
fore, cannot  be  regarded  as  merely  subjective.  It  is  hard  to 
see  how  mere  subjective  position  could  influence  the  intensity 
of  motion.  Motion  in  an  ideal  space  should  be  consigned  to 
the  confused  limbo  of  square  circles,  mermaids,  and  centaurs. 

Our  space  conception  must  be  such  in  the  end  as  to  satisfy 
our  space  intuition.  While  we  must  not  invoke  intuition  as 
explanation,  yet  we  must  always  start  with  intuition,  and  the 
conceptualizing  process  must  be  such  as  to  clarify  and  terminate 
in  intuition.  Where  our  intuitions,  moreover,  as  in  our  general 
reactions  upon  our  environment,  are  due  to  survival  selection, 
they  have,  as  Spencer  says,  well-nigh  the  force  of  demonstra- 
tion, and  must  not  be  lightly  brushed  aside.  While  the  space 
intuition  cannot  be  expected  to  separate  sharply  between  the 


THE   NATURE    OF   REAL   SPACE  233 

physical  and  spatial  character  of  our  world,  yet  the  unspoiled 
space  intuition  always  has  insisted  upon  an  ontological  zero  space 
as  over  against  physical  and  subjective  things.  Hence,  the 
natural  part  the  void  plays  in  early  cosmogonic  and  physical 
theories.  However  much  cruder  the  tools  of  Leucippus  and 
Democritus  than  those  of  Kant,  yet  their  conception  of  an 
ontological  void  gives  us  a  more  fundamental  character  of  the 
space  concept  than  the  aspect  of  serial  construction  emphasized 
by  the  Kantians. 

Most  important  of  all  is  the  fact  that  this  conception  of  space 
satisfies  the  criterion  made  so  much  of  by  the  epistemological 
idealists  themselves,  and  more  than  once  implied  in  the  pre- 
ceding, viz.  that  those  conditions  which  limit,  and  must  be 
taken  account  of  in  the  realization  of  purpose,  must  themselves 
be  real.  Otherwise,  they  would  not  be  conditions.  Space 
and  time  must  certainly  be  taken  account  of  in  realizing  our 
human  purposes;  therefore,  they  must  be  as  real  as  those 
purposes  themselves.  If  they  were  merely  illusion,  or  "  mere 
appearance,"  then  it  ought  to  be  possible  to  ignore  them,  at  least 
after  finding  out  the  truth  about  them.  Take  space  distance, 
for  example.  Our  measurement  of  this  with  reference  to  geomet- 
rical ideals,  such  as  the  straight  line,  our  use  of  a  particular 
kind  of  measuring  rod,  such  as  the  yardstick,  must,  indeed,  be 
regarded  as  a  matter  of  ideal  selection  and  construction.  But 
if  I  live  on  the  Pacific  coast,  and  an  important  philosophical  ses- 
sion is  held  in  New  York,  or  if  I  want  to  see  my  friends  across 
the  sea,  the  mere  declaring  space  ideal  does  not  annihilate  the 
limitation.  Intermediary  processes  must  somehow  be  reckoned 
with;  and  those  processes  presuppose  space  as  the  condition 
of  their  externality.  Thus,  space  as  distance  conditions  the 
equations  of  the  astronomer  and  the  joy  and  communion  of 
willing  selves.  And  so  with  time.  No  mere  conversion  to 
absolute  idealism  will  make  new  wine  old,  will  convert  youth 
into  old  age,  or  make  the  faded  flower  bloom  again.  I  do  not 
see  how  in  the  only  world  of  purposes  of  which  we  know  any- 
thing, it  is  possible  to  ignore  the  space  and  time  limitations  of 
those  purposes.  We  grant  that  the  space  and  time  characters 
taken  apart  are  meager  enough  when  contrasted  with  the 
concrete  life  of  feeling  and  willing.  We  are,  indeed,  in  our 


234  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

inmost  beings  willing  and  appreciative  selves.  But  space  and 
time  remain,  nevertheless,  irreducible  limits  to  which  we  must 
adjust  ourselves,  if  we  would  be  sane.  Only  by  so  adjusting 
ourselves  can  we  realize  our  purposes. 

I  do  not  insist  upon  a  greater  reality  for  space  than  for  egos 
or  things,  i.e.  for  energy,  whatever  form  it  may  take.  All 
I  insist  upon  is  that  we  must  acknowledge  both  types  of  reality. 
The  question  whether  space  could  exist  before  things  could 
have  meaning  only  for  those  who,  with  the  medievals,  regard 
the  world  of  things  as  created  at  a  finite  time  out  of  nothing  — 
as  embodying  eternal  archetypes  or  what  not.  It  is  the  prov- 
ince of  philosophy  like  science,  however,  to  investigate  the 
constitution  of  the  world,  not  its  creation.  The  temporal 
priority  of  space  to  things,  can  therefore,  have  no  significance 
for  us.  We  can,  however,  abstract  distance  from  things,  and 
must  do  so,  both  for  purposes  of  physical  science,  and  for 
practical  life. 

Properties  of  Space 

If  space  is  real,  we  cannot  determine  its  properties  a  priori, 
but  must  ascertain  them  in  the  same  empirical  way  as  we 
ascertain  the  properties  of  things.  We  must  distinguish  here 
between  the  methods  of  geometry  and  the  methods  of  empirical 
science.  In  the  former  case,  we  have  seen  that  the  properties 
are  predetermined  by  the  postulates  of  the  specific  system.  In 
the  case  of  real  space,  as  in  regard  to  the  empirical  world 
generally,  the  properties  must  be  discovered  inductively.  "It 
is  true  that  by  natural  selection,  our  mind  has  adapted  itself 
to  the  conditions  of  the  external  world,"  as  Poincare  says.  It 
is  thus  predisposed  to  certain  types  of  reactions  which  are  ad- 
vantageous in  the  world  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  But  this 
predisposition,  so  far  from  proving  space  categories  to  be 
phenomenal,  as  Kant  would  have  it,  would  tend  to  show  their 
relevance.  They  have  been  forced  upon  the  organism  as  a 
result  of  the  demands  of  the  environment.  Science,  however, 
cannot  stop  with  intuition,  but  must  supplement  and  correct 
intuition  by  experiment. 

The  question  naturally  arises  how  we.  can  experiment  upon 
space.  Poincare  holds  that  we  can  only  experiment  upon 


THE   NATURE   OF   REAL   SPACE  235 

bodies,  and  their  relations :  "  Experiments  only  teach  us  the 
relations  of  bodies  to  one  another ;  none  of  them  bears,  or  can 
bear,  on  the  relations  of  bodies  with  space,  or  on  the  mutual 
relations  of  different  parts  of  space."  And  again:  "Your 
experiments,  however  numerous  they  may  be,  bearing  only  on 
the  relations  of  bodies  to  one  another,  will  reveal  to  us  nothing 
about  the  mutual  parts  of  space."  l  This  argument  does  not 
seem  conclusive.  While  it  is  true  that  the  experiments  bear 
directly  on  bodies  in  space,  it  is  also  true  that,  indirectly  at 
any  rate,  we  can  know  the  properties  of  space  by  the  differences 
which  they  make  to  the  reactions  of  bodies  or  other  energies. 
If  space  had  four  dimensions  instead  of  three,  if  it  were  dis- 
continuous, if  it  offered  interference  to  motion,  etc.,  we  would 
find  it  out  in  the  reactions  of  things;  and  our  account  of 
reality  would  have  to  be  different.  The  case  of  space  is  in  no 
wise  different  from  that  of  other  entities  of  which  we  have  no 
immediate  evidence,  but  which  we  assume  and  endow  with 
definite  properties  in  order  to  account  for  the  behavior  of 
entities  with  which  we  can  directly  deal. 

While  we  must  distinguish  between  the  properties  of  real 
space,  and  the  properties  which  are  postulated  by  the  various 
types  of  geometry,  in  some  respects  we  can  expect  to  find 
agreement  since  the  world  of  geometry  is  an  abstraction  from 
our  concrete  experience.  We  must  be  careful,  however,  that 
the  agreement  is  not  one  of  mere  words  rather  than  of  funda- 
mental intent.  Thus,  the  property  of  externality  is  a  funda- 
mental condition,  both  of  geometric  space  and  real  space. 
Externality,  however,  in  geometric  space  may  have  to  do  only 
with  qualitative  diversity  in  an  order  series,  though  in  metric 
geometry,  it  seems  to  imply  something  more.  It  here,  at 
least,  symbolizes  distance.  Externality  in  the  case  of  real 
space,  is  such  as  the  physicist  and  astronomer,  as  well  as  the 
practical  man,  must  deal  with  in  their  calculations  and  practical 
adjustments.  According  to  Newton's  law  of  gravitation,  the 
attraction  of  bodies  upon  each  other  varies  with  the  masses 
and  inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance.  In  all  formulae 
for  energy  reactions,  distance  figures  as  an  independent  and 
unique  variable.  This  is  as  true  in  our  social  interrelations  of 
1  "Science  and  Hypothesis,"  p.  60. 


236  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

love  and  war  as  of  light  rays  and  stellar  masses.  This  is  quite 
different  from  externality  in  a  series,  such  as  the  number  or 
tone  series.  Externality,  in  the  latter  case,  is  merely  figurative, 
and  indicates  the  direction  of  differences. 

Geometric  space,  and  real  space  are  both,  it  would  seem, 
characterized  by  dimensionality.  But  here,  again,  the  meaning 
of  the  term  may  be  vastly  different.  Dimension  in  geometry 
has  reference  to  different  directions  of  variations.  The  number 
of  dimensions  is  determined  by  our  postulates.  When  we 
speak  of  real  space  as  having  three  dimensions,  we  mean  that 
positions  within  it  are  determinable  with  reference  to  three 
straight  lines  at  right  angles  to  each  other,  or  the  Cartesian 
coordinates.  Now  the  coordinates  themselves  are,  of  course, 
conventional.  Real  space,  so  far  as  we  know,  is  divided  by  no 
straight  lines  at  right  angles  to  each  other.  These  are  supplied 
by  our  mind.  Some  other  device  might  do  for  symbolizing  the 
relations  of  bodies  to  each  other  in  space.  But  the  Cartesian 
coordinates  are  the  most  convenient.  And  they  are  the  most 
convenient,  because  they  enable  us  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
character  of  real  space  in  the  simplest  way.  While  it  is  not 
correct,  perhaps,  therefore  to  say  that  space  has  three  dimen- 
sions, space  has  such  a  constitution  as  is  determinable  by  the 
three  Euclidean  dimensions.  No  less  will  suffice  for  our  ad- 
justments to  the  real  world  in  space,  and  no  more  are  necessary. 
If  an  additional  dimension  were  necessary,  we  should  soon  find 
it  out,  as  things  would  continually  vanish  out  of  our  ken  and 
mysteriously  reappear  in  our  world,  contrary  to  all  our  laws  of 
expectancy.  When  they  seem  to  do  so,  it  is  hocus-pocus. 
The  temporal  order  has  sometimes  been  spoken  of  as  a  fourth 
dimension.  It  is,  indeed,  another  dimension  with  its  own  deter- 
minations and  order,  but  it  is  not  a  dimension  of  space. 

Another  characteristic  which  geometric  space  and  real  space 
seem  to  have  in  common  is  that  of  homogeneity.  Space  is 
neutral  with  reference  to  the  quantitative  and  qualitative 
diversity  of  the  world  of  energies.  It  has  no  positions  or  rela- 
tions of  its  own.  This  implies,  in  the  words  of  Simon  Newcomb  : 
(a)  "It  is  the  same  for  all  bodies.  Wherever  one  body  could 
move,  thither  could  any  other  body  move."  (6)  "It  has  no 
qualities  or  differentia  dependent  either  on  position  or  direc- 


THE    NATURE    OF   REAL   SPACE  237 

tion."  1  In  a  more  picturesque  way,  this  has  been  expressed 
by  Clerk  Maxwell:  " There  are  no  landmarks  in  space.  One 
portion  of  space  is  exactly  like  any  other  portion,  so  that  we 
cannot  tell  where  we  are.  We  are,  as  it  were,  on  an  unruffled 
sea,  without  stars,  compass,  soundings,  wind,  or  tide,  and  we 
cannot  tell  in  what  direction  we  are  going.  We  have  no  log 
which  we  can  cast  out  to  take  a  dead  reckoning  by.  We  may 
compute  our  rate  of  motion  with  respect  to  the  neighboring 
bodies,  but  we  do  not  know  how  these  bodies  may  be  moving  in 
space."  2  While  homogeneity  is  a  characteristic  alike  of  geome- 
tric and  real  space,  it  is  a  mere  abstract  postulate  for  geometry, 
while  it  must  be  empirically  ascertained  for  real  space.  Energies 
act  as  if  real  space  were  homogeneous.  We  can  satisfactorily 
account  for  the  behavior  of  things  in  space  by  taking  account 
merely  of  their  own  positions  and  relations.  These  are  not 
distorted  in  any  manner  by  space.  This  makes  possible  free 
mobility  so  far  as  space  is  concerned. 

Real  space  seems  to  be  homoloidal,  that  is,  two  parallel 
straight  lines  may  be  produced  indefinitely  without  converging 
or  diverging.  This  property  it  shares  with  Euclidean  geometry 
which  is  shaped  upon  the  properties  of  real  space.  It  is  not  a 
postulate  of  various  types  of  non-Euclidean  geometry.  We 
may  construct  a  geometry  on  the  assumption  of  positive  or  nega- 
tive curvature.  But  so  far  as  experiments  are  able  to  ascertain, 
real  space  has  zero  curvature.  Light  rays  travel  in  straight 
lines.  To  be  sure,  this,  as  other  characteristics,  must  be  taken 
as  pragmatic.  As  Clifford  has  pointed  out,  a  slight  departure 
towards  positive  or  negative  curvature  might  escape  our  in- 
struments of  observation.  If  space  and  things  alike  had  a 
certain  inherent  curvature,  it  would,  of  course,  be  impossible 
for  us  to  discover.  Our  straight  lines  would  in  that  case  be 
a  certain  standard  curve  which  practically  would  mean  a 
straight  line.  We  have  not  spoken  of  the  supposition  of  pro- 
jective  geometry,  that  parallel  lines  meet  at  infinity,  since  this 
is  a  mere  convention  to  make  it  possible  to  deal  with  all  lines 
under  a  common  formula. 

Another  pragmatic  characteristic  of  space,  is  that  of  conti- 

1  Article,  "  Space,"  Baldwin's  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology. 

2  "Matter  and  Motion, "  Article  CIL 


238  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

nuity.  Space  seems  to  be  the  one  absolute  static  continuum. 
In  a  space  made  up  of  real  discrete  points,  objects  would  have 
to  vanish,  and  to  be  recreated  again  at  every  stage  of  their 
motion.  While  such  miraculous  occasionalism  may  not  be 
inconceivable,  since  it  has  been  conceived  by  philosophers,  it 
is  certainly  a  clumsy  assumption,  and  violates  the  law  of  econ- 
omy. Our  experience  seems  to  indicate  that  we  have  identity 
within  the  movement.  Things  do  not  disappear  and  reappear, 
but  persist  through  their  motion  in  space. 

We  must  be  careful  here  not  to  confuse  the  mathematical 
conception  of  continuity,  and  the  conception  of  a  metaphysical 
continuum.  The  mathematical  concept  of  continuity  is  an 
order  concept.  In  the  words  of  Fine :  "The  points  of  a  right 
line  constitute  an  ordinal  assemblage  of  points,  which  is  called 
continuous  because  it  possesses  the  following  attributes : 
(1)  Between  any  two  points  of  the  line  there  are  other  points 
of  the  line  (Aristotle  and  Kant).  (2)  If  all  the  points  of  a  line 
are  distributed  in  accordance  with  any  given  law  into  two  assem- 
blages, A  and  B,  so  related  that  each  point  in  A  lies  to  the 
left  of  every  point  in  B,  either  the  assemblage  A  will  possess  a 
last  point  to  the  right,  or  the  assemblage  B  a  first  point  to  the 
left  (Cantor,  Dedekind)."  l  Stated  briefly,  this  means  that 
a  line  is  infinitely  divisible,  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  any  cut 
of  the  line  is  common  to  the  two  divisions  thus  constituted.  In 
the  case  of  numbers,  this  means  that  the  irrationals,  such  as 
the  cube  root  of  two,  are  required  as  well  as  the  rationals,  i.e., 
it  is  the  series  of  real  numbers  which  is  continuous.  The  ques- 
tion of  ordinal  continuity  as  thus  defined  is,  however,  a  dis- 
tinct question  from  that  of  the  metaphysical  continuum.  To 
quote  from  Poincare :  "The  continuum  so  conceived  is  only  a 
collection  of  individuals  ranged  in  a  certain  order,  infinite  in 
number,  it  is  true,  but  exterior  to  one  another.  ...  Of  the 
celebrated  formula,  'the  continuum  is  unity  in  multiplicity/ 
only  the  multiplicity  remains,  the  unity  has  disappeared. 
The  Analysts  are  none  the  less  right  in  defining  their  continuum 
as  they  do.  ...  But  this  is  enough  to  apprise  us  that  the 
veritable  mathematical  continuum  is  a  very  different  thing 

^'Continuity  (in  Geometry),"  Baldwin's  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and 
Psychology. 


THE   NATURE    OF   REAL   SPACE  239 

from  that  of  the  physicists,  and  that  of  the  metaphysicians."  l 
The  real  continuum  implies  interpenetration  of  parts  and  not 
the  mere  side-by-sideness  of  a  qualitative  order.  We  derive 
our  intuition  of  continuity  first  of  all  from  our  free  movements 
with  their  unity  of  impulse,  and  we  then  extend  our  intuition 
to  other  moving  continua.  But  all  moving  continua  presuppose 
the  pure  continuum  of  space  —  interpenetration  without  dif- 
ference, the  pure  amorphous  background  upon  which  all  our 
physical  and  mathematical  continua  can  be  drawn.  While 
the  present  mathematical  definition  of  continuity  seems  to  be 
satisfactory  for  the  ordinal  type  of  continuum,  it  cannot  be  said 
to  define  the  unique  type  of  continuum,  which  we  find  in  the 
case  of  space. 

The  granular  conception  seems  on  the  whole  to  have  been 
victorious  in  the  physical  world.  The  ether,  indeed,  has  long 
been  depended  upon  to  fill  the  gaps  and  to  furnish  a  genuine 
physical  continuum.  It  was  invented  on  the  analogy  of  known 
media.  As  sound  travels  through  the  medium  of  air,  so  it 
was  supposed  that  light  must  have  a  medium  to  travel  through, 
and  this  medium  is  consequently  conceived  as  having  the  ve- 
locity of  light.  The  analogy  is  faulty,  however,  since  sound  is 
a  complex  energy,  while  light  is  a  simple  type  of  energy.  Again, 
air  waves  are  a  genuine  form  of  energy,  which  the  ether  sup- 
posedly is  not.  The  fact  is  that  on  this  reasoning,  we  would 
require  an  infinite  regress.  If  each  energy  requires  a  medium 
to  travel  through,  then  this  in  turn  must  have  a  medium  to 
travel  through,  and  so  on,  indefinitely.  If,  moreover,  the 
ether  has  the  velocity  of  light,  then  some  other  form  of  energy 
of  vastly  higher  velocity  perhaps,  would  require  a  different 
medium.  Lord  Kelvin,  for  example  conceives  gravitation  as 
having  a  velocity  a  million  times  faster  than  that  of  light. 
To  say  dogmatically  that  there  can  be  no  higher  velocity  than 
that  of  light,  since  that  is  the  velocity  of  the  ether,  sounds  rather 
medieval.  Furthermore,  the  properties  of  ether,  as  pointed  out 
by  Karl  Pearson,  are  far  from  clear  and  distinct.  They  seem 
to  include,  side  by  side,  the  properties  of  absolute  fluidity  and 
absolute  incompressibility.  "  Treating  the  ether,  not  as  a 
conception,  but  as  a  phenomenon,  we  find  it  difficult  to  realize 

1  "Science  and  Hypothesis,"  p.  17. 


240  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

how  a  continuous  and  same  medium  could  offer  any  resistance 
to  a  sliding  motion  of  its  parts,  for  the  continuity  and  sameness 
would  involve,  after  any  displacement,  everything  being  the 
same  as  before  displacement.  .  .  .  Finally,  any  relative  motion 
of  translation  as  distinct  from  one  of  rotation,  seems  excluded 
by  the  idea  of  absolute  incompressibility.  .  .  .  When  we  pro- 
ject the  ether  into  our  phenomenal  world,  it  is  at  once  recognized 
as  a  conceptual  limit  unparalleled  in  perceptual  experience, 
and  we  do  not  feel  at  home  with  it."  1  The  ether,  as  ordinarily 
conceived,  thus  embodies  two  opposite  limits,  that  of  the 
absolutely  rigid  solid,  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  an  absolutely 
fluid  continuum  on  the  other  hand.  The  former  limit  is  evi- 
dently derived  from  the  physical  world  as  we  know  it.  The 
latter  limit  would  seem  to  be  identical  pragmatically  with 
pure  space. 

If,  again,  we  conceive  the  ether  as  granular,  we  must  give 
up  the  property  of  an  absolute  continuum  so  far  as  it  is  con- 
cerned. This  is  not  always  clear  to  those  who  hold  the  view. 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  in  speaking  of  the  ether,  says:  "As  to  its 
density,  it  must  be  far  greater  than  that  of  any  form  of  matter, 
millions  of  times  denser  than  lead  or  platinum.  Yet  matter 
moves  through  it,  without  any  friction  or  viscosity.  There  is 
nothing  paradoxical  in  this :  viscosity  is  not  a  function  of 
density ;  the  two  are  not  necessarily  connected." 2  It  is, 
however,  not  a  question  of  degree  of  density,  but  of  the  absence 
of  discrete  units,  however  packed  these  discrete  units  may  be. 
If  they  act  as  separate  impulses  over  any  distance,  we  have  no 
guarantee  of  an  absolute  continuum;  this  must  be  looked  for 
outside  of  the  constitution  thus  assumed. 

Another  property  which  is  implied  in  regard  to  space  is  that 
of  infinity.  This  property,  again,  must  not  be  confused  with 
the  ordinal  infinity  of  mathematics  which  does  not  occupy  real 
space  at  all.  The  question  of  the  infinite  extent  of  real  space 
is  a  pragmatic  one.  It  is  certainly  true  for  our  scientific  pur- 
poses. However  much  the  powers  of  our  telescopes  may  be 
improved,  we  cannot  discover  any  limit  to  space.  Yet  this 

1  "The  Grammar  of  Science, "  2d  ed.,  p.  271. 

»  Presidential  Address  before  the  British  Association,  Science,  Vol.  XXXVIII, 
p.  388. 


THE   NATURE    OF   REAL   SPACE  241 

fact  can  never  amount  to  an  absolute  proof.  Such  a  proof 
would  have  to  be  indirect,  and  based  on  logical  considerations. 
It  is  true  that  we  cannot  conceive  the  contrary.  While  we 
can  conceive  a  limit  to  the  physical  world  in  space,  we  cannot 
conceive  coming  to  the  end  of  the  void.  But,  as  we  have  pointed 
out  before,  our  ability  to  conceive  the  contrary  is  largely  a 
matter  of  custom  with  its  habits  of  thought,  and,  in  any  case, 
cannot  amount  to  absolute  proof  where  the  constitution  of  our 
empirical  world  is  concerned.  A  more  satisfactory  approach 
would  be  from  our  knowledge  of  the  constitution  of  the  physical 
world.  If  Arrhenius  is  right  that  the  physical  world  must  be 
conceived  as  infinite,  that  would  also  prove  the  infinity  of  space. 
To  quote:  "The  most  obvious  argument,  however,  against 
the  finite  quantity  of  matter  in  space  is  the  fact  that  the  energy 
of  the  stellar  bodies  in  the  course  of  infinite  time  would  long 
ago  have  been  dissipated  in  empty  space  so  that  no  luminous 
stars  could  further  exist."  l  Whether  such  an  argument  as 
regards  the  give  and  take  of  energy  proves  the  most  convenient 
hypothesis,  science  must  decide.  It  implies  the  infinity  of  our 
particular  type  of  space.  It  is  possible,  perhaps,  to  conceive 
that  our  space  is  insulated  by  another  type  of  space  with  oppo- 
site properties.  Science,  however,  assumes  the  oneness  of 
space  as  well  as  its  infinity,  that  is,  that  the  properties  are  the 
same  throughout  an  infinite  void.  Such  characters  of  space 
are,  of  course,  pragmatic,  and  capable  only  of  empirical  proof 
which  cannot  go  beyond  probability.  If  space,  moreover, 
is  infinite,  there  may  be  other  worlds  quite  unknown  to  us, 
and  incapable  of  making  any  pragmatic  difference  to  the  world 
as  we  know  it.  The  law  of  gravitation  and  other  known 
laws  are  based  upon  finite  distances.  But  perhaps,  the  science 
of  an  indefinite  future  may  have  superior  tools,  instrumental 
and  logical  to  those  known  to  us ;  and  before  these,  such  prob- 
lems as  those  of  the  infinity  and  unity  of  space  may  yield. 
For  us,  these  properties  are  in  a  large  measure  conventional, 
though  fitting  in  with  our  experience  and  congenial  to  the 
constitution  of  our  minds. 

In  addition  to  such  properties  as  geometry  and  physics  ap- 
parently have  in  common,  real  space  has  certain  properties 

1  Monist,  Vol.  XXI,  p.  173. 


242  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

which  seem  strictly  physical.  Such  a  property  is  that  of 
absolute  conductivity.  Negatively  stated,  this  means  that 
space  offers  no  interference,  no  friction,  or  viscosity,  to  the 
spread  of  energies  such  as  the  rays  of  light.  Light  is  in  no 
wise  interfered  with,  it  would  seem,  until  it  strikes  opaque 
bodies.  Positively  it  means  that  energy  does  flow  from  part 
to  part  of  the  universe  without  loss  or  absorption  so  far  as 
space  is  concerned.  The  nearer  we  approximate  to  pure  space 
in  our  experiments  and  observations,  the  more  perfect  is  the 
conductivity.  It  is  practically  perfect  in  our  vacuum  tubes, 
and  in  the  interstellar  spaces.  Where  there  is  interference,  we 
can  always  account  for  it  satisfactorily  on  the  basis  of  the  con- 
flict of  energies.  If  the  world  of  energies  must  be  conceived, 
whether  in  the  gross  or  in  the  minute,  as  impulses  acting  over 
distance,  space  becomes  the  conductive  medium  par  excellence. 
We  are  familiar  with  energies  riding  on  other  energies  —  elec- 
tricity riding  on  material  energies,  mental  impulses  riding 
on  neural  energies  —  but  the  world  of  energies,  as  a  whole, 
rides  on  nothing  but  space.  And  the  properties  of  space 
are  such  as  to  harmonize  with  the  law  of  conservation  of 
energy. 

Again,  cosmic  space  is  said  to  have  .the  property  of  absolute 
zero  with  reference  to  temperature.  This  would  seem,  at 
first  glance,  to  be  a  merely  negative  property  —  the  absence 
of  heat,  or  the  absence  of  motion.  "A  substance  composed 
of  molecules  at  rest  is  absolutely  cold,  and  no  substance  can 
be  imagined  to  be  colder.  The  absolute  zero  of  temperature 
is  the  true  zero  of  a  thermometric  scale,  not  the  freezing  point 
of  water  or  of  any  other  substance."  l  "The  absolute  zero 
of  temperature  is  273°  below  zero  on  the  Centigrade  scale. 
The  Absolute  Scale  of  Temperature,  as  it  is  called,  is  thus  ob- 
tained by  adding  273°  to  the  temperature  expressed  in  degrees 
Centigrade." 2  While  absolute  zero  is  not  heat,  but  the 
limit  as  regards  heat,  it  must,  however,  like  zero  curvature,  be 
taken  as  a  real  property  of  space  if  it  conditions  the  movement 
of  energies  in  space.  Thus  it  would  seem  to  make  a  real  difference 
to  the  radiation  and  loss  of  heat.  It  would  have  to  be  taken 
into  account,  in  connection  with  such  a  problem  as  the  possi- 
1  Soddy,  "Matter  and  Energy,"  p.  84.  *  Ibid.,  p.  87. 


THE   NATURE   OF  REAL  SPACE  243 

bility  of  communicating  life  germs  across  interstellar  space. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  to  be  a  real  limit  which  must  be 
recognized  in  the  world  of  behavior. 

It  is  evident  that  if  space  is  a  real  entity,  even  though  not  a 
thing  entity,  we  must  ascertain  its  properties  empirically,  as 
those  of  other  real  entities.  The  properties  we  have  enumerated 
seem  to  be  such  empirical  properties.  If  we  can  conceive  such 
a  space,  then  it  can  be  real.  If  we  can  approximate  towards 
it  in  our  experiments  and  observations,  then  it  must  be  real. 
If  it  is  implied  in  our  practical  conduct  towards  our  world, 
then  we  have  already  assumed  it  to  be  real.  Whether  it  is 
exactly  as  described  or  whether  it  has  still  other  properties, 
must  be  left  for  scientific  experience  to  ascertain.  In  the 
real  world,  we  deal  with  probabilities,  not  with  a  priori  cer- 
tainties. 

Objections  to  Real  Space 

It  would  not  be  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  naive  objections 
of  Parmenides,  if  it  were  not  for  the  hold  which  they  have  con- 
tinued to  exercise  upon  the  human  mind.  Parmenides'  objec- 
tions arise  from  his  fundamental  conception  of  reality.  For 
him  only  inert  material  things  are  real.  These,  however,  are 
not  our  ordinary  sense  things,  but  intellectual  abstractions. 
Their  only  quality  is  their  space-filling  quality,  or,  as  we  should 
call  it,  impenetrability.  It  is  to  Parmenides'  immortal  credit 
that  he  foreshadows  in  his  abstract  way  the  conception  of  the 
conservation  of  matter,  and  of  the  conservation  of  properties. 
If  we  grant  his  premises  in  regard  to  "  being,"  his  conclusions 
do  credit  to  one  of  the  greatest  intellects  of  antiquity.  If 
inert,  space-filling  matter  is  the  only  reality,  it  follows,  of 
course,  that  empty  space  and  empty  time  are  "unthinkable  and 
unspeakable";  but  this  only  serves  to  show  how  limited  by 
custom  conceivability  is,  and  how  unreliable  as  a  criterion 
of  reality ;  and  Parmenides  is  not  the  only  one  who  has  made 
the  impossibility  of  conceiving  the  contrary  the  final  test.  If 
there  can  be  nothing  between  the  different  parts  of  matter,  then 
matter  must  lie  next  to  matter,  and  we  have  an  absolute 
plenum.  We  must  agree  with  Parmenides  that  space  is  no 
material  thing ;  but  our  intellect  has  been  liberated  from  the 


244  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

conception  that  only  material  things  are  real.  We  can  conceive 
immaterial  energies,  and  entities  which  are  not  even  energies, 
such  as  pure  space.  Moreover,  we  no  longer  regard  matter 
as  inert,  but  as  itself  a  special  form  of  energy.  Impenetrability, 
the  only  property  conceded  by  the  economic  mind  of 
Parmenides,  who  scorns  the  wealth  of  sense  qualities  as  appear- 
ance, is  itself  an  energy  property,  and  only  known  in  energy 
reactions.  It  is  true  that  the  human  mind  has  clung  tena- 
ciously to  a  plenum  of  some  sort.  But  to  say  that  a  thing  can 
only  act  where  it  is,  is  to  say  that  it  cannot  act  at  all,  for  in 
order  for  one  thing  to  act  upon  another,  they  could  not  be  even  an 
infinitesimal  distance  apart.  That  means,  that  they  must  be 
coincident  or  identical,  not  only  as  regards  their  gross  struc- 
ture, but  as  regards  their  minutest  constitutents  as  well.  In 
that  case,  there  can  obviously  be  no  motion.  So  if  there  is 
motion,  there  must  be  action  over  distance.  This  would  hold 
equally  for  any  medium  through  which  things  are  supposed 
to  act  upon  each  other.  Energy  is  where  it  does  work;  and 
there  is  nothing  against  energy  radiating  over  pure  space  except 
our  ingrained  prejudice.  Custom  makes  it  seem  uncanny. 
But  custom  is  not  a  final  criterion  of  reality. 

The  objections  brought  by  Zeno  are  directed  against  the 
Pythagorean  conception  of  space,  as  made  up  of  an  infinite 
series  of  discrete  real  points.  Against  this  conception,  Zeno's 
brilliant  dialectic  is  conclusive.  If  space  is  made  up  of  real 
points,  then  the  point  itself  must  be  in  a  certain  place.  This 
place,  in  turn,  being  a  real  entity,  must  be  located  in  another 
place,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum.  In  such  a  space,  there  could  be 
no  motion,  for  a  body  could  not  move  where  it  is,  nor  could  it 
move  from  one  point  to  another.  To  do  that,  it  would  have 
to  vanish  and  be  recreated,  which  is  not  motion  at  all.  The 
arrow  is  stuck  in  its  place,  transfixed  by  its  position,  and  it 
cannot  move.  Nor  would  it  help  us  to  take  large  quantities 
of  space  as  our  unit,  since  these  would  crumble  in  turn  into 
their  non-extended  components.  While  Zeno's  arguments  are 
conclusive  against  any  conception  of  a  real  serial  space,  it  does 
not  affect  the  concept  of  space  as  we  have  defined  it.  Points 
here  are  merely  our  ideal  abstractions,  and  do  not  constitute 
the  continuum  of  real  space. 


THE   NATURE   OF   REAL   SPACE  245 

Aristotle's  argument  against  the  void  is  an  argumentum  ad 
hominem.  It  is  directed  against  the  conception  of  the  atomists. 
If  we  may  believe  Aristotle,  Democritus  assumed  that  heavier 
atoms  would  fall  more  rapidly  in  the  void  than  lighter  ones, 
and  would  thus  collide  and  form  a  whirl.  Aristotle  is  quite 
right  that  pure  space  does  not  account  for  motion  or  rest;  it 
accounts  for  no  tendency  downward  or  upward;  much  less 
can  it  account  for  the  different  rates  of  motion  as  faster  or 
slower,  in  so  far  as  we  abstract  from  the  relations  of  bodies. 
Motion  and  difference  of  motion  must  be  accounted  for  by  the 
constitution  of  the  world  of  energies.  Space  is  neutral  to 
motion  except  in  so  far  as  the  conception  of  distance  is  involved. 
Not  until  Newton's  theory  of  gravitation  did  it  become  clear 
what  exact  difference  space  makes  in  the  interaction  of  energies. 
And  what  Newton  did  in  the  large  has  since  been  done  in  the 
small,  as  in  the  calculations  of  J.  J.  Thomson  and  others,  in 
regard  to  the  interaction  of  the  electrons  within  the  atom.  In 
antiquity,  Aristotle  succeeded  in  discrediting  the  atomists,  and 
in  keeping  alive  the  crude  conception  of  "natural  places." 
Aristotle's  own  conception  is  that  of  figured,  continuous  ex- 
tension, "the  limit  of  the  surrounding  body  in  respect  to  that 
which  it  surrounds."  Hence  Aristotle's  space  is  finite,  limited 
by  the  limits  of  the  world,  and  conversely  it  becomes  absurd 
to  speak  of  a  space  outside  of  the  world,  or  empty  space. 
Aristotle,  in  other  words,  confused  space  with  the  geometric 
qualities  of  things. 

In  recent  times,  Kant's  arguments  for  the  ideality  of  space 
have  in  the  main  been  taken  for  granted.  It  ought  to  be  said, 
however,  that  Kant  does  not  regard  space  as  an  individual  illu- 
sion. It  has  validity  for  our  social  experience,  though  it  can- 
not be  said  to  correspond  to  any  metaphysical  reality.  Kant 
even  intimates  that  for  a  higher  being  with  a  unique  power  of 
intuition,  space  would  be  irrelevant.  Kant's  own  space 
concept  is  not  at  all  clear.  He  seems  to  waver  between  the 
Newtonian  conception  of  space  as  a  neutral  continuum  and  the 
Leibnizian  conception  of  space  as  a  geometric  system  of  rela- 
tions; and  this  makes  his  arguments  against  space  far  from 
clear.  These  may  be  stated  as  of  two  types.  His  argument  in 
the  Transcendental  ^Esthetic  of  the  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  " 


246  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

is  to  the  effect  that  space  is  ideal  or  phenomenal  because  it  is 
a  priori.  The  space  form,  with  its  implications,  is  innate  in 
our  mental  constitution,  and  a  condition  for  our  perceiving  an 
external  world  at  all.  There  is,  as  we  have  seen,  an  element 
of  truth  in  this.  Certain  space  coordinations  have  been  forced 
upon  the  organism  in  its  adjustment  to  the  environment  through 
the  evolutionary  process.  On  these  coordinations  are  based 
the  intuitions  which  play  so  important  a  part  in  Euclidean 
geometry.  But  so  far  from  such  innateness  proving  space 
ideal,  it  would  seem  to  be  a  strong  presumption  for  the  reality 
of  our  space  world.  And  it  seems  to  stand  the  test  of  scientific 
as  well  as  practical  adjustment,  when  the  crude  intuitions 
are  criticized  and  verified,  as  all  our  intuitions  of  reality  must 
be. 

The  other  type  of  argument  is  implied  in  the  First  Antinomy, 
and  is  based  upon  the  principle  of  contradiction.  Kant  holds 
that  if  we  try  to  conceive  a  world  in  real  space,  we  land  in  an 
antinomy.  The  thesis  of  this  antinomy  is  that  the  world  in 
space  must  be  finite,  since  we  cannot,  through  any  succession 
of  acts,  synthesize  an  infinite  manifold.  This  objection  has 
lost  its  force  with  the  modern  conception  of  infinite  series.  The 
criterion  of  an  infinite  series  is  not  that  we  cannot  reach  the 
last  term  in  our  successive  acts  of  counting,  but  that  there  are 
collections  whose  constitution  is  such  that  a  part  of  the  collec- 
tion can  be  put  in  a  one-to-one  correspondence  with  the  whole. 
This  obviously  cannot  be  ascertained  by  successive  steps  of 
ordering,  but  must  be  proved  by  an  examination  of  the  postu- 
lates which  underlie  the  particular  type  of  collection.  The 
number  series,  among  others,  is  such  that  any  part  can  be  put 
in  a  one-to-one  correspondence  with  the  whole.  We  may  re- 
gard Kant's  thesis,  therefore,  as  obsolete.  To  quote  Bertrand 
Russell :  "  Owing  to  the  labors  of  the  mathematicians,  notably 
George  Cantor,  it  has  appeared  that  the  impossibility  of  in- 
finite collections  was  a  mistake.  They  are  not,  in  fact,  self- 
contradictory,  but  only  contradictory  of  certain  rather  obstinate 
mental  prejudices.  Hence  the  reasons  for  regarding  space  and 
time  as  unreal  have  become  inoperative,  and  one  of  the  great 
sources  of  metaphysical  constructions  is  dried  up."  1 

1  "The  Problems  of  Philosophy,"  p.  229. 


THE   NATURE    OF   REAL   SPACE  247 

The  antithesis  of  Kant's  antinomy  is  to  the  effect  that  the 
world  must  be  infinite  in  space  since  otherwise  the  world  would 
be  related  to  pure  space,  which  for  Kant  is  nothing  at  all.  This 
objection  is  equally  irrelevant.  Whether  the  world  in  space 
is  finite  or  infinite,  it  could  hold  together  by  its  own  energy 
relations.  An  example  of  this  is  the  gravitational  system  which 
is  held  together,  not  by  the  attraction  of  space,  but  by  the 
attraction  of  masses  upon  each  other  where  space  figures  as 
distance,  and  so  makes  a  real  difference  within  the  system.  A 
world  finite  in  space  does  indeed  raise  problems,  though  not 
the  logical  one  of  inconceivability.  We  have  already  spoken 
of  Arrhenius'  problem  of  the  dissipation  of  energy  into  empty 
space,  without  compensation,  in  such  a  world.  But  that  is  a 
problem  of  another  kind  from  that  raised  by  Kant,  and  im- 
plies the  reality  of  space. 

Finally,  absolute  idealism  has  tried  to  rule  out  the  existence 
of  space  by  conceiving  reality  as,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  logical 
system.  Now  we  would  agree  that  in  a  purely  logical  system, 
real  space  can  have  no  relevancy.  We  would  also  agree  that 
logical  systems  must  be  taken  account  of  as  real  aspects  of  our 
world.  The  universe  lends  itself  to  logical  categories.  We 
can  formulate  the  facts  of  our  world  into  significant  systems 
of  relations.  But  we  must  deny  that  logical  systems  are  the 
only  systems  of  our  real  world.  However  important  in  the  field 
of  description,  they  are  abstractions  from  the  movement  and 
variety  of  the  concrete  world  of  flux.  In  fact,  it  is  because 
they  are  abstractions  that  they  are  useful  in  the  economy  of 
life.  The  real  unit  of  reality,  we  have  found,  is  an  energy 
system;  and  in  this  real  space  figures  as  an  indispensable 
condition.  This  is  true,  not  only  in  the  world  of  physical 
things,  but  in  the  world  of  personal  relations  as  well.  And  these 
must  be  taken,  even  by  absolute  idealism,  as  final  realities,  if  it 
is  to  have  any  reality  at  all. 


PART  IV 
TIME  AND  REALITY 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  NATURE  OF  TIME 

The  Timeless 1 

IN  order  to  understand  better  the  function  which  time  fills 
in  experience,  we  shall  begin  by  abstracting  from  time  and  by 
regarding  reality  as  a  timeless  system  of  truth.  Such  a  world 
is  of  course  for  us  as  time-subjects  a  mere  hypothetical  suppo- 
sition. All  we  can  do  is  to  abstract  from  our  time-experience 
as  we  have  it,  and  conceive  it  as  it  would  be  with  time  elimin- 
ated, given  for  the  time  being  our  distinctions  as  arisen  by 
virtue  of  the  time-process. 

Such  a  world  would  be  a  world  of  abstract  dialectic,  such 
indeed  as  McTaggart  conceives  the  Hegelian  world  to  be;  a 
dialectic  silent  as  the  dance  of  the  deaf;  a  dialectic  without 
movement  or  variation  of  attention,  for  ideal  motion,  Trende- 
lenburg  to  the  contrary,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms ;  a  timeless 
viewing,  where  all  the  stages  or  ideal  moments  exist  for  con- 
sciousness at  once,  and  have  their  fixed  setting  in  an  ideal 
scheme,  where  reality  is  included  and  exhausted  in  one  self- 
complete  and  infinite  definition,  the  Ide,  the  Absolute. 

If  we  have  recovered  our  breath,  after  speaking  such  magic 
and  potent  words,  let  us  see  what  place  certain  categories  would 
have  in  such  a  world.  The  concepts  that  would  have  to  be  re- 
translated especially  in  such  a  world  are  the  dynamic  concepts. 
Take  for  example  the  concept  of  motion.  Just  think  of  defin- 
ing motion  as  an  infinite  number  of  intermediary  positions  ex- 
isting at  once  for  a  subject.  While  you  may  thus  shirk  Zeno's 
problem  as  to  where  a  body  is  when  it  passes  from  one  position 
to  another,  or  how  positions  can  be  made  continuous,  by 
denying  any  passing  whatsoever,  you  raise  a  still  more  serious 

1  This  section  is  borrowed  in  the  main  from  "Time  and  Reality,"  pp.  60-63. 

251 


252  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

problem  as  to  how  a  body  can  be  in  an  infinite  number  of  po- 
sitions at  once.  In  other  words,  such  concepts  as  motion 
or  change  would  be  meaningless  in  such  a  world. 

Causality  in  such  a  world  would  have  to  be  translated  into 
terms  of  sufficient  reason  or  logical  system.  Cause  and  effect 
would  be  identical  and  both  terms  would  have  to  be  dropped 
out  of  our  vocabulary  as  superfluous. 

Attention  in  such  a  world  could  be  merely  the  convergence 
of  an  ideal  system  and  would  have  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of 
significance.  It  would  be  the  complete  meaning  or  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  whole  of  itself.  Variation  of  attention  would 
of  course  have  to  be  ruled  out.  That  the  qualitative  dis- 
crimination, assumed  in  such  a  world,  presupposes  variation 
of  attention  and,  therefore,  time  is  ignored  by  the  advocates  of 
the  static  view.  We,  the  abstracting  time-subjects,  have 
these  contents  present  to  us,  and,  therefore,  can  make  a  time- 
less synthesis  of  them. 

Activity  in  such  a  world  we  should  have  to  translate,  as 
Spinoza  does,  into  adequate  ideas  or  complete  logical  definition. 
Possibility  or  impossibility  would  be  mere  logical  abstractions 
and  meaningless,  where  there  can  be  no  creation  out  of  a  con- 
tingent future. 

Past  and  future  in  such  a  world  would  become  mere  attitudes 
on  the  part  of  a  willing  subject.  But  the  meaning  has  dropped 
out  of  both  of  them,  they  are  mere  words,  "  sounding  brass  and 
tinkling  cymbal."  What  could  the  attitudes  of  pastness  and 
expectancy  mean,  where  nothing  happens? 

Non-being  in  such  a  world  could  only  mean  that  one  fact  or 
form  of  being  is  not  another,  and  the  assertion  of  identity  could 
hardly  be  made  when  no  question  or  doubt  is  possible.  It  is 
the  seeming  flux  of  things  that  makes  us  demand  identity.  To 
be  honest  at  all  in  such  a  world  we  should  have  to  eliminate  at 
least  a  good  deal  of  our  vocabulary  ancj  the  corresponding 
concepts  and  judgments. 

When,  however,  we  keep  in  mind  that  the  icy  grandeur  of 
this  static  fabric  is  the  result  of  our  own  abstraction  and  ideal 
construction,  there  can  be  no  danger  of  being  led  astray.  It  is, 
on  the  contrary,  altogether  proper  to  try  the  logical  experiment 
of  elimination,  for  the  purpose  of  discovering  the  value  and 


THE  NATURE   OF  TIME  253 

interrelation  of  our  concepts.  Abstracting  certain  concepts  from 
concrete  experience  only  keeps  them  in  abeyance  (aufheben), 
it  does  not  destroy  them.  We  have  all  the  while  in  the  back- 
ground the  inner  wealth  of  concrete  meaning,  which  gives 
value  to  our  abstractions. 

If,  however,  we  take  our  timeless  construction  seriously,  if 
we  hypostatize  it  into  a  world,  as  so  many  philosophers  have 
done,  we  shall  land  in  hopeless  contradictions.  In  a  really 
timeless  world,  in  a  world  of  no  activity  and  no  process,  there 
would  not  only  be  no  dynamic  judgments,  but  no  judgments  at 
all.  As  far  as  we  know  at  any  rate,  the  arising  and  develop- 
ment of  consciousness  would  be  impossible  except  for  the  ever 
present  necessity  of  adjustment  on  the  part  of  the  organism  to 
a  complex  and  changing  environment,  in  order  to  realize  its 
needs.  Concepts  are  developed  as  tools  by  means  of  which 
we  may  be  able  to  seize  upon  the  relatively  permanent  in  the 
fleeting  changes  of  things  and  thus  anticipate  the  future.  The 
psychic  content  becomes  detached  from  the  perception,  because 
the  perception  has  disappeared,  and  the  psychic  content  thus 
torn  loose  becomes  symbolic,  for  the  reflective  subject,  of  all 
similar  situations.  Without  time-process,  therefore,  we  should 
have  no  meaning,  no  judgments;  we  should  have  simply  the 
glassy  stare  of  the  mystic  One,  which  again  is  nothing  except 
for  our  choosing  to  posit  it. 

All  description  must  indeed  be  abstract  and  timeless.  Such 
description  is  necessary  for  the  highest  possible  coordination 
and  adjustment.  Without  description,  social  cooperation  would 
be  well  nigh  impossible.  There  are  two  dangers,  however, 
that  we  must  guard  against. 

One  danger  is  that  of  being  satisfied  with  an  incomplete  and 
provisional  description.  While  description  is  not  reality,  it 
should  furnish  us  with  symbolic  equivalents  for  reality.  The 
timeless  description  has  made  absurd  the  facts  it  was  invented 
to  make  intelligible.  But  a  description  which  lands  us  in 
hopeless  contradictions  is  obviously  a  failure.  We  must  look 
again  for  the  elements  which  we  have  missed.  We  must  have 
faith  that  the  universe  is  amenable,  at  least,  to  consistency; 
and  seeming  contradiction  must  be  a  challenge  to  us  to  revise 
and  complete  our  ideal  network  of  symbols. 


254  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

A  second  danger  lies  in  the  tendency  to  hypostatize  our  de- 
scription as  reality.  This  has  been  the  danger  alike  of  idealism 
and  realism  in  the  past.  Democritus  hypostatized  his  hypo- 
thetical atoms,  and  Herbart  his  qualities,  no  less  than  Plato  his 
impersonal  ideas  and  Hegel  his  Absolute.  We  must  not  forget 
that  reality  at  heart  is  individual  and  that,  however  far  we  may 
carry  our  conceptual  analysis  and  synthesis,  it  can  never  ex- 
haust the  "  acknowledgment "  of  unitary  wholes  which  only  will 
and  appreciation  can  create  for  us.  This  individual  core  of 
being  must  always  remain  a  limit  toward  which  description  ap- 
proximates, but  which  it  does  not  reach.  The  conceptual  func- 
tion, in  other  words,  must  regard  itself  as  the  instrument  by 
means  of  which  the  willing  and  appreciative  self  strives  to  be- 
come conscious  of  itself  and  to  realize  itself.  It  is  not  an  end 
in  itself. 

The  real  is  the  finite,  the  fleeting  and  perishable,  the  per- 
manent is  the  abstract  and  symbolic. 

This  is  but  his  shadow, 
His  substance  is  not  here, 

may  be  said  of  all  our  ideal  abstractions.     This  means  a  reversal 
of  the  idealistic  emphasis  from  Plato  down.     Instead  of 

Alles  Vergangliche 
1st  nur  ei  Gleichniss, 

I  would  say  that  the  eternal  or  conceptual  is  only  a  poor  copy 
or  symbol  of  real  life. 

Grau,  teurer  Freund,  ist  alle  Theorie, 
Und  grtin  des  Lebens  goldner  Baum. 

With  this  introduction  it  devolves  upon  us  now  to  seek  for 
the  missing  element,  which  may  free  our  above  description 
of  reality  from  its  contradictoriness.  If  we  cannot  eliminate 
time,  what  function  does  time  play  in  reality?  We  cannot 
treat  it  as  a  mere  illusion,  for  illusions,  too,  must  be  explained ; 
and  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the  illusion  of  time  and  change  could 
arise  in  a  static  world.  Rather  must  we  agree  with  Aristotle 
that  motion  could  not  originate  from  non-motion  and  so  must 
have  an  eternal  basis  in  the  nature  of  things.  This  seems  to 
be  implied  in  the  general  scientific  assumption  that  motion  is 


THE   NATURE   OF  TIME  255 

a  universal  property  of  matter,  for  by  motion  in  this  case 
science  cannot  mean  the  mathematical  concept  of  motion, 
which  implies  space,  mass,  and  time,  but  it  means  the  fact  of 
change,  the  real  time-character  of  our  world. 

Time  and  the  Psychological  Present 

J.  S.  Mill,  in  his  "  Examination  of  Hamilton  "  raises  the  ques- 
tion of  how  the  past  and  the  future  can  coexist  in  the  present. 
That  they  do  so,  he  regards  as  a  fact ;  but  how  they  can  do  so 
he  regards  as  an  ultimate  mystery.  We  may  state  the  difficulty 
in  the  form  of  an  antinomy : 

1.  Such  is  the  nature  of  time  that  when  the  present  is,  the 
past  has  been  and  the  future  is  not  yet.     The  present  is  a  mere 
point  or  ideal  boundary  making  the  past  continuous  with  the 
future,  but  having  no  duration  of  its  own.     This  is  the  char- 
acter of  time  which  Aristotle  lays  down  in  his  "  Physics."  1 
It  emphasizes  the  non-being  aspect  of  time  without  making  a 
clear  distinction  between  this  and  the  quantitative  and  serial 
character.     This  gives  us  the  mathematical  present,  which  is 
a  mere  limit  or  zero. 

2.  But  the  past  and  future  must  coexist  in  the  present,  else 
how  can  they  be  contrasted  in  the  act  of  judgment  or  mean 
past  and  future  ?    Past  and  future  are  for  introspection  present 
attitudes.     Time  therefore  must  be  an  ideal  order,  having  its 
basis  in  the  qualitative  character  of  the  present  moment.     This 
is  the  horn  of  the  dilemma  emphasized  by  metaphysical  ideal- 
ism.    Since  our  present  is  at  best  fragmentary,  the  total  time- 
order  must  correspond  to  the  qualitative  content  of  an  absolute 
mind  in  which  all  the  moments  of  experience  like  a  melody  can 
be  intuited  at  once.     If  the  former  attitude  gave  time  no  ex- 
tent, this  attitude  gives  it  an  infinite  extent;   but  in  doing  so 
it  loses  the  fundamental  character  of  time,  i.e.  a,  sense  of  pass- 
ing, of  coming  and  going. 

The  concept  of  the  psychological  or  "specious"  present  has 
been  proposed  as  a  compromise  between  the  attitudes  already 
stated.  On  the  one  hand,  the  present,  according  to  this  view, 
is  not  a  mere  zero  or  ideal  limit.  The  past  and  future  are  our 
attitudes  to  the  waning  and  rising  processes  which  really  do 

1  Aristotle,  "Physics,"  Book  IV,  Section  10. 


256  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

coexist  in  the  stream  of  consciousness.  The  present  has  a  cer- 
tain extent  of  duration  within  which  the  passing  contents  can 
be  held  together  within  one  span  or  attention-moment.  This 
span  may  vary  from  a  fraction  of  a  second  to  several  seconds 
in  its  extent,  depending  upon  the  conditions  which  obtain.  At 
any  rate,  the  psychological  present  is  a  complex  affair.  In  the 
words  of  Robert  MacDougall :  "The  whole  group  of  elements 
constituting  the  rhythmic  unit  is  present  to  consciousness  as  a 
single  experience;  the  first  of  its  elements  has  never  fallen 
out  of  consciousness  before  the  final  member  appears ;  and  the 
awareness  of  intensive  differences  and  temporal  segregation  is 
as  immediate  a  fact  of  sensory  apprehension  as  is  the  perception 
of  the  musical  qualities  of  the  sounds  themselves."  1 

There  seem  to  be  two  factors  of  which  we  have  to  take  ac- 
count in  order  to  understand  our  psychological  sense  of  duration. 
One  factor  is  that  of  attention-strain,  the  other  factor  is  that  of 
the  filling,  or  content  of  the  intervals  of  succession.  One  can- 
not be  reduced  to  the  other,  though  they  may  have  their  effect 
upon  each  other.  Our  sense  of  duration  seems  to  vary  inde- 
pendently with  each.  The  greater,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
attention-strain,  the  longer  seems  the  time.  This  can  be  illus- 
trated by  any  case  of  tedium  or  frustrated  expectancy.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  more  filling,  the  longer  seems  the  time. 
This  is  true,  not  only  in  retrospect,  but  it  is  true  for  our  im- 
mediate sense  of  duration  as  well.  It  used  to  be  thought  that 
relatively  empty  time  seemed  long  and  that  full  time  seemed 
short.  But  relatively  empty  time  when  it  fills  the  momentary 
interest,  as  when  one  dozes  away  listlessly  for  the  time  being, 
seems  remarkably  short,  while  full  time  makes  the  duration 
seem  only  longer  for  being  full. 

The  stream  of  duration  has  been  compared  with  the  physical 
stream  with  its  bed  and  its  moving  flow.  The  bed  in  the  case 
of  the  psychological  stream  consists  in  the  relatively  stable 
contents  and  tendencies;  the  stream  is  the  coming  and  going 
of  contents.  The  permanent  background  of  consciousness 
consists  in  our  impulses  and  tendencies,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
mass  of  organic  sensations,  usually  unnoticed,  on  the  other 
hand.  The  rhythm  of  some  of  the  organic  sensations  gives 

1  Harvard  Psychological  Studies,  Vol.  I,  322. 


THE   NATURE   OF   TIME  257 

us  a  more  or  less  constant  measure  of  immediate  duration.  It 
has  been  shown  that  visceral  ancesthesia  produces  a  lack  of  sense 
of  duration,  while  the  undisturbed  constancy  of  our  organic 
rhythms  in  passive  attention  gives  us  the  original  of  Newton's 
uniform  flow  of  time.  Again,  the  rhythm  of  the  perceived 
content  makes  a  difference:  "When  a  series  of  stimulations 
(auditory  for  example)  runs  off  without  any  decided  rhythm 
of  grouping,  the  specious  present  maintains  an  approximately 
fixed  length,  or,  at  least,  the  variations  in  its  length  have  no 
functional  relation  to  the  series  of  stimulations  in  question."  1 
With  rhythmic  stimulations,  however,  the  pace  of  duration 
may  be  shortened  or  lengthened;  the  immediate  span  can  be 
made  to  contract  or  expand  in  sympathy  with  the  rhythm  of 
the  stimulus.  It  has  been  shown  experimentally  that  nerve 
currents  respond  to  physical  rhythms  up  to  about  five  hundred 
pulses  per  second. 

Certain  contents  or  tendencies  may  persist  through  an  in- 
definite number  of  these  briefer  spans  and  thus  mark  off  our 
sense  of  duration  into  longer  periods  or  time- wholes.  These 
tendencies  may  be  primary,  as  where,  on  the  perceptual  level, 
certain  impulses  or  instincts,  like  hunger  or  the  migration 
instinct,  persist  and  so  mark  off  rhythmic  periods.  On  the 
ideational  level  certain  ideas  or  purposes  endure  through 
the  moving  scenes  of  perception  and  imagery,  emphasizing  and 
selecting  the  relevant  contents,  until  brought  to  a  consciousness 
of  completeness.  Beyond  this  immediate  sense  of  duration, 
however,  our  serial  location  depends  mostly  on  indirect  con- 
siderations, such  as  the  association  of  our  flow  of  experience 
with  the  artificial  chronological  units.  We  cannot  rely  on 
vividness  as  the  sole  criterion  of  distance  from  the  present. 
Even  in  individual  history  some  events  far  removed,  such  as 
childhood  experiences,  may  be  more  vivid  than  those  that  have 
recently  transpired. 

The  account  of  the  specious  present,  as  we  have  tried  to 
give  it,  is  merely  a  statement  of  our  consciousness  of  duration ; 
it  does  not  explain  it.  What  the  specious  present  means  in 
terms  of  content  is  that  a  certain  context  of  content  or  tendency 
remains  practically  constant,  while  other  contents  come  and 

i  Dunlap,  The  Jour.  Phil.  Psych,  and  Sci.  Meth.,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  348. 


258  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

go.  This  may  be  a  matter  of  seconds  or  of  years  in  accordance 
with  the  identity  of  interest  which  spans  the  interval.  Patho- 
logically we  see  it  in  the  persistent  idea.  Normally  we  have 
it  most  clearly  in  the  realization  of  purpose,  where  a  nuclear 
content  furnishes  the  permanent  leading  throughout  the  pro- 
cess of  realization.  The  so  called  time- whole  is  the  stream  of 
tendency  controlled  and  bounded  by  a  purpose,  such  as  the 
drama,  college  life,  etc.  In  ordinary  passive  life,  even  when 
our  minds  are  most  vacant  of  content,  there  is,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  background  or  stable  nucleus  of  the  organic  sensations ;  on 
the  other  hand,  certain  motor  rhythms  of  strain  and  release 
mark  off  the  stream  and  help  to  constitute  the  sense  of  the 
specious  present. 

This  sense  of  duration  or  stability  of  certain  contents  in  the 
stream  of  change,  so  far  from  being  identical  with  time,  as  some 
have  maintained,  is  its  antipodes  —  the  eternity  aspect  of  ex- 
perience. The  time  character  is  bound  up  with  the  coming 
and  going,  with  the  passing  and  novelty  of  the  process.  Thus 
in  every  moment  of  experience,  the  eternity  aspect  of  constant 
and  cumulative  content  is  present  together  with  the  time  as- 
pect of  fleetingness ;  and  it  is  on  the  background  of  this  limited 
eternity-consciousness  that  we  catch  the  significance  of  time, 
as  it  is  on  the  background  of  the  dark  space  of  night  that  we 
catch  the  significance  of  the  fleeting  and  dying  sparks. 

Time  is  the  precondition  of  the  consciousness  of  before  and 
after,  as  space  is  of  the  side-by-side.  The  consciousness  of 
before  and  after  is  the  simplest  consciousness  of  time-process, 
the  most  immediate  time  relation.  But  it  is  not  time  any  more 
than  the  minimum  extensible  is  space.  Rather  time  is  the  con- 
dition which  makes  possible  the  consciousness  of  before  and 
after,  of  the  sense  of  passing  as  opposed  to  simultaneity.  Upon 
this  consciousness  of  before  and  after  we  build  our  artificial 
framework  of  chronological  systems,  infinitely  outstripping 
the  brief  immediate  span  of  a  few  seconds  but  none  the  less 
deriving  their  content  from  it. 

Having  stated  briefly  the  psychological  aspect  of  the  specious 
present,  we  must  say  a  few  words  about  its  metaphysical  im- 
port. What  is  the  character  of  this  changing  process  which 
we  thus  immediately  intuit  ?  Is  it  continuous  or  is  it  discrete  ? 


THE   NATURE   OF  TIME  259 

Is  there  one  general  flow  of  duration  made  up  of  infinitesimal 
parts  or  is  this  duration  essentially  a  discrete  affair,  coming  in 
finite  drops? 

That  we  have  an  intuition  of  a  continuous  duration  is  the 
opinion  of  Bergson.  According  to  Bergson  1  all  our  ideas  are 
in  constant  flux.  In  this  flux,  our  psychological  states  are 
continuous  and  cumulative.  It  is  only  to  our  attention  that 
they  seem  discontinuous  and  successive.  It  is  in  our  im- 
mediate intuition  of  this  psychological  stream  that  we  get  the 
inwardness  of  reality.  But  by  means  of  concepts,  the  intellect 
tries  to  piece  together  in  the  form  of  static  pictures  what  psy- 
chologically and  in  fact  is  a  continuous  flow.  It  thus  gives  us 
a  cinematographic  substitute  for  the  movement  of  reality.  He 
contrasts  time  or  real  duration,  as  absolute  qualitative  change 
and  interpenetration,  with  space  as  the  image  of  the  coexistent, 
quantitative,  and  divisible.  All  contents  are  continuously 
flowing,  nothing  remaining  constant,  however  infinitesimal 
may  be  the  period  elasped.  Our  qualities  are  but  tangents  to 
the  ever  moving  stream.  They  do  not  characterize  the  stream. 
What  repeats  itself  is  the  spatialized  image.  The  abstracting, 
stereotyping  intellect  is  thus  incapable  by  its  very  nature  of 
taking  account  of  reality.  This  can  be  done  only  by  intuition, 
the  immediate  sense  of  the  ceaseless  flow  in  which  the  contents 
continually  melt  into  each  other  as  the  tones  blend  into  the 
melody. 

While  Bergson,  and  his  master  Renouvier,  thus  assume  a 
continuous  flow  of  consciousness,  with  infinitesimal  increments 
of  altering  variation  as  filling  the  intervals  of  duration,  our  or- 
dinary psychological  evidence  at  any  rate  fails  to  verify  such 
an  intuition.  Renouvier  and  Bergson  have  both  been  mis- 
led by  the  divisibility  of  quantitative  intervals  into  assuming 
the  continuous  change  of  all  our  contents.  This  is  a  purely 
a  priori  assumption.  The  divisibility  of  the  artificial  units  of 
time  measurement  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  change  or  con- 
stancy of  the  real  contents  of  experience.  Their  constancy  or 

1  See  the  beginning  of  "Creative  Evolution."  The  strongest  statement  of 
Bergson's  position  as  to  time  is  to  be  found  in  his  first  book,  "Time  and  Free  Will." 
A  brilliant  sketch  of  the  temporalist  development  in  France  may  be  found  in  a 
series  of  articles  by  Professor  A.  O.  Lovejoy  in  the  Philosophical  Review,  Vol. 
XXI,  under  the  heading,  "The  Problem  of  Time  in  Present  French  Philosophy." 


260  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

change  must  be  ascertained  empirically.  That  some  of  our 
contents  are  practically  constant,  the  truth  process  itself  im- 
plies. Else  how  could  we  mean  change? 

So  far  from  our  being  able  to  intuit  infinitesimal  increments 
of  change  our  ordinary  consciousness  of  succession  is  decidedly 
limited.1  Our  conscious  processes,  so  far  as  we  can  take  ac- 
count of  them,  come  in  finite  drops,  whatever  continuity  there 
may  be  in  their  physiological  and  physical  conditions.  We 
must  here  proceed  pragmatically,  following  the  leading  of  the 
evidence  and  not  of  a  priori  assumptions.  While  Bergson  has 
warned  us  against  spatializing  psychological  processes,  this 
seems  to  be  what  he  himself  has  done.  Having  started  with 
quantitative  intervals,  he  has  proceeded  to  apply  the  infini- 
tesimal calculus  to  the  contents  and  to  force  the  facts  to  obey 
its  infinitesimal  rate  of  change.  What  we  must  do,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  to  discover,  so  far  as  we  can,  such  change  or  constancy 
as  there  is,  and  then  to  apply  our  mathematical  tools  so  far 
as  may  be  convenient.  We  must  take  experience,  as  we  find  it, 
with  its  constancies  and  its  flux.  Our  knowledge  of  either  is 
far  from  warranting  any  assumption  of  absoluteness.  To 
dogmatize  about  absolute  flux  is  only  to  substitute  another 
kind  of  absolute  for  that  of  the  Eleatic.  The  former  may  be 
more  fashionable ;  but  it  is  not  necessarily  any  more  scientific. 
Because  we  find  some  flux,  we  have  no  more  reason  to  assume 
absolute  flux  than  we  have  for  assuming  absolute  constancy 
everywhere  because  we  find  some  constancy. 

1 1  undertook  an  experiment  on  the  perception  of  sound  succession,  with  the 
cooperation  of  my  friend  Dr.  Bruce  V.  Hill,  a  physicist,  some  years  ago.  The 
click  of  a  telephone  was  used  as  the  stimulus.  As  the  experiment  has  not  yet 
been  published,  I  can  here  give  only  the  preliminary  results.  We  found  that 
distinct  intervals  could  be  perceived  by  the  practiced  ear  up  to  about  ifo  of  a 
second,  our  best  record  being  .0064  by  an  expert  musician.  After  that  the 
successive  stimuli  were  discriminated  from  the  simultaneous  by  the  lengthened 
impulse  or  "  rasp  "  of  the  former.  Toward  the  upper  limit  of  any  discrimination 
at  all,  the  successive  stimuli  furnished,  not  a  longer  sound,  but  a  "thicker" 
sound  ;  and  to  one  or  two  musical  subjects  there  seemed  to  be  a  slight  difference 
in  pitch.  The  upper  limit  for  any  discrimination  at  all  as  between  successive 
and  simultaneous  stimuli  could  by  practice  be  made  much  higher  than  that  of 
Exner  (which  was  about  5&r  second),  the  highest  limit  with  us  being  .00144 
of  a  second.  This,  however,  was  not  a  discrimination  of  succession,  as  Exner 
supposed.  And  even  so  it  is  a  long  way  from  an  intuition  of  infinitesimal 
transitions,  which  Bergson  seems  to  assume. 


THE   NATURE   OF   TIME  261 

The  Temporal  and  the  Eternal 

Some  of  our  contents  as  observed  in  experience  seem  to 
overlap  our  ideal  divisions  of  moments.  On  the  other  hand, 
intuition  indicates  that  some  contents  are  changing.  Our 
quantitative  intervals  of  duration,  moreover,  do  not  exist  to 
be  filled  by  our  calculus  of  flux  or  our  plenum  of  being.  They 
are  but  a  tool  for  describing  the  concrete  process.  An  exam- 
ination of  the  specious  present  brings  us  face  to  face  with  an 
antinomy : 

1.  We  have  the  intuition  of  flux.    Contents  come  and  go. 
Our  attitudes  and  meanings  change.     If  it  were  not  that  our 
world  is  a  world  of  flux,  we  should  have  no  need  of  science  or 
prediction.     To  try  to  derive  this  flux  from  a  static  world  is 
absurd.     Somewhere  there  must  be  change  and  variation  for 
even  the  illusion  of  time  to  arise. 

2.  But  we  also  have  the  intuition  of  constancy.     We  do 
recognize  contents  as  the  same.     We  are  able  in  a  measure  to 
predict  the  course  of  process.     Were  there  no  constancy,  we 
should  have  no  concepts,  no  science.     We  should  neither  recog- 
nize our  original  experiences  nor  the  pictures  of  our  original 
experiences.     We  should  not  be  able  to  mean  change  or  any- 
thing else,  for  meaning  implies  the  selection  and  persistence  of 
certain  abstract   contents,   in  terms   of  which   the    concrete 
situations  can  be  defined. 

The  dogmatic  temporalist  and  the  dogmatic  eternalist  thus 
come  to  a  draw,  if  not  to  blows.  Each  rests  his  case  on  intui- 
tion and  conviction.  And  intuition  verifies  each  and  belies 
each  in  turn.  If  the  dogmatic  eternalist  insists  that  only  the 
intuition  of  substance  can  be  trusted  and  that  change  is  an 
illusion  and  inconceivable,  the  dogmatic  temporalist  naturally 
retorts  that  it  is  only  the  intuition  of  change  that  can  be  trusted 
and  that  constancy  is  somehow  an  artificial  affair.  Nor  is  the 
situation  altered  by  substituting  for  the  world  of  the  naked 
senses,  the  world  of  the  microscope.  The  values  are  different 
to  be  sure,  but  they  still  furnish  our  intuition  with  the  same 
antinomy  of  change  and  constancy.  If  they  didn't,  we  should 
have  no  intuition  at  all.  Perception  as  a  subjective  act  implies 
both  process  and  a  fairly  constant  context. 


262  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

The  only  solution  of  the  antinomy  which  is  open  to  us  is 
the  pragmatic  one.  We  must  take  both  change  and  constancy 
at  their  face  value.  What  saves  us  from  contradiction  is  that 
they  do  not  hold  in  the  same  respect.  The  perceptual  context 
perhaps  changes,  while  the  memory  context  remains  practically 
constant.  The  meaning  is  still  the  same,  though  the  parch- 
ment has  faded.  Or  part  of  the  perceptual  context  is  con- 
stant, while  part  changes.  The  outline  of  the  leaves  and  their 
spatial  context  is  the  same,  though  they  have  assumed  their 
gorgeous  autumn  hues. 

In  our  world  at  any  rate  the  thirst  of  the  will  for  novelty  is 
abundantly  satisfied,  but  there  is  also  an  opportunity  to  realize 
the  demand  for  loyalty.  We  must  take  each  from  our  finite 
point  of  view.  What  is  novelty  to  the  child  in  its  learning  pro- 
cess —  the  art  of  reading  and  writing,  Mother  Goose,  the  mul- 
tiplication table —  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  maturer 
person  part  of  the  world's  constant  stock  in  trade;  only  the 
individual  value,  to  the  beginner,  is  here  novel.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  a  still  superior  experience  the  content  which  is  novel 
to  us  may  be  as  old  as  the  world,  and  what  we  take  for  con- 
stant may  make  the  angels  stand  back  and  wonder.  In  the 
meantime  we  must  evaluate  the  world  from  our  finite  point  of 
view. 

In  general  what  is  most  liable  to  change  is  the  concrete, 
and  what  we  find  to  be  most  constant  is  the  abstract.  Some- 
how, in  the  midst  of  the  stream  of  concrete  flow,  certain  forms 
and  qualities  seem  to  persist.  In  all  the  variety  of  our  thinking 
the  same  fundamental  laws  hold  good,  and  so  we  can  have  social 
validity.  In  the  midst  of  the  endless  variety  of  chemical 
compounds  with  their  unique  individuality,  certain  qualities 
or  elements  can  be  analyzed  out,  and  so  we  can  have  description 
and  prediction.  In  the  midst  of  the  changes  and  chances  of 
history,  certain  fundamental  motifs  seem  to  be  present,  and  so 
we  can  read  history  at  least  backward  and  utilize  the  experi- 
ence of  the  past  in  present  emergencies.  However  much, 
therefore,  the  concrete  contexts  of  reality  change,  the  abstract 
ratios  and  laws  seem  to  hold  within  the  observed  conditions  of 
the  flux.  For  new  conditions,  fresh  observations  and  general- 
izations must  be  made.  He  who  enters  the  temple  of  truth 


THE   NATURE    OF   TIME  263 

must  leave  his  dogmatic  absolutes  in  the  outer  court,  though 
temperamental  bias  will  always  make  this  difficult. 

One  thing  seems  clear,  whoever  acknowledges  time  and  pro- 
cess to  be  real  must  be  an  empiricist.  He  must  recognize 
that,  if  time  is  real,  it  may  creep  into  all  our  generalizations, 
including  our  theory  of  time  itself.  And  while  time  cannot 
"fall  on  its  other"  and  annihilate  itself,  it  is  likely  to  annihilate 
many  of  those  prejudices  which  we  now  mistake  for  truth.  We 
must  take  our  truths  for  their  practical  value  for  the  time  being, 
with  due  tolerance  for  other  points  of  view. 

Instead  of  making  time  have  the  whole  thickness  of  reality, 
as  Bergson  does,  and  insist  that  all  our  contents  must  flow  ab- 
solutely or  accumulate  absolutely,  I  have  taken  time  as  a  very 
thin  concept.  Time  is  not  the  whole  of  reality  but  an  inde- 
pendent variable  or  attribute  of  reality.  But  if  time  is  an 
independent  variable,  so  is  stuff,  too,  an  independent  variable. 
Various  ensembles  change  unequally  because  of  their  own  in- 
herent character  and  organization.  And  some  characters  and 
relations  there  may  be  which,  while  they  exist  in  the  flow,  still 
remain  independent  of  it.  Certain  logical  and  spatial  relations 
seem  to  be  thus  independent.  The  formula,  2  plus  2  equals 
4,  once  discovered  seems  to  be  timeless.  The  secret  of  inde- 
pendence from  change  lies,  in  any  case,  in  the  isolation  or  ab- 
straction of  certain  parts  from  the  concrete  stream  of  individual 
history.  This  may  hold  for  concrete  parts  as  well  as  formal  as- 
pects. Water  imbedded  in  certain  crystals  and  isolated  for 
the  time  being  from  the  other  energies  of  nature  may  remain 
essentially  unchanged  in  quantity  as  well  as  quality  for  thou- 
sands of  years.  The  will,  embodied  in  certain  artificial  vehicles 
such  as  the  instruments  of  language  or  of  marble  and  thus 
taken  out  of  the  individual  stream,  retains  its  own  individuality 
unaltered,  through  the  flux  of  ages.  How  far  anything  remains 
finally  eternal  can  only  be  made  clear  in  the  historic  realization 
of  human  purposes. 

In  such  a  world  the  processes  of  reality  will  change  con- 
tinuously or  discontinuously  according  to  the  complexity  of  its 
plural  structure.  We  cannot  deduce  from  the  mere  concept 
of  time  which  they  will  do.  Nor  can  we  deduce  from  the  mere 
concept  of  time,  as  Bergson  does,  that  the  process  must  be 


264  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

absolutely  cumulative,  so  that  each  moment  like  a  rolling 
snowball  owns  all  that  went  before.  Our  finite  practical  ex- 
perience does  not  seem  to  carry  out  this  assumption.  Is  old 
age  the  cumulative  net  result  of  childhood  with  its  plasticity; 
youth  with  its  enthusiasm;  manhood  with  its  vigorous  pur- 
poses ?  Our  finite  life  is  leaky  somehow.  It  is  more  like  a  net 
than  a  snowball.  Some  of  it  is  cumulated,  but  the  meshes  get 
loose  and  break  afterwhile  and  life's  contents  ooze  through. 
The  permanent  part  is  the  Karma,  the  net  result  of  tendency. 

As  we  float  in  the  sea  of  change,  whether  in  mystic  acquies- 
cence or  struggling  in  practical  earnestness  with  its  forces,  some 
constancies  are  indeed  recognized,  enabling  us  to  hold  our  heads 
above  the  stream  and  to  satisfy  our  need  for  prevision  or  thought. 
We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  these  constancies  are  only 
relevant  to  a  universe  of  process.  And  the  fluency  of  this 
process,  not  its  constancy  or  measure,  is  what  I  understand  by 
time.  If  we  must  recognize  reality  as  having  such  a  flowing, 
passing,  novel  constitution;  if  we  must  orient  ourselves  to 
our  world  in  such  a  way  in  order  to  realize  the  purposes  of  life, 
then  such  it  is.  And  our  conceptualizing  faculty,  instead  of 
demurring  and  saying  it  cannot  be,  must  accommodate  itself 
to  the  facts.  It  must  recognize  that  it  is  in  just  such  a  world 
that  it  has  its  peculiar  function  of  leading. 

The  Pragmatic  Character  of  Time 

Whether  we  regard  space  as  subjective  or  objective,  we  all 
agree  now  that  space  must  be  such  as  to  make  no  difference  to 
the  character  of  things  in  space.  It  enables  us  to  spread 
these  out,  and  herein  lies  its  convenience,  but  it  makes  no 
intrinsic  difference  to  the  facts  thus  spread  out.  Free  mo- 
bility is  one  of  the  few  axioms  that  critical  geometry  has  left 
standing.  Logically,  therefore,  we  can  easily  abstract  from 
space.  But  not  so  with  time.  Whatever  theory  we  may  hold 
as  regards  time,  it  must  be  admitted  that  time  alters  our  con- 
tents, making  an  intrinsic  and  not  merely  an  external  difference. 
So  far  from  the  axiom  of  free  mobility  being  applicable  to  time, 
reality,  in  so  far  as  time  pertains  to  it,  is  by  all  agreed  to  be 
irreversible.  Contents  become  less  vivid  and  distinct,  assume 
different  values  and,  above  all,  bear  a  different  functional  re- 


THE   NATURE   OF  TIME  265 

lation  to  the  present  subject.  This  has  made  even  those  who 
with  Kant  regard  time  as  subjective  speak  of  it  as  an  irrever- 
sible series,  though  irreversible  is  applicable  only  to  process, 
not  to  series.  How  a  subjective  form  can  be  irreversible  passes 
understanding. 

Leaving  out  all  dialectic  subtleties,  let  us  try  to  define  the 
fundamental  character  of  time.  The  difficulties  besetting  one's 
path  on  such  a  quest  are  due  in  part  to  the  confused  character 
of  the  concept  as  we  find  it  in  common-sense  thinking,  but  still 
more  to  the  idols  of  the  philosophic  tribe.  From  Zeno  down  to 
Bradley  it  has  been  taken  for  granted  that  time  is  serial  in 
nature,  and  the  arguments  for  and  against  its  reality  have 
always  implied  this  serial  character.  Assuming  time  as  an 
order  series,  Kant  was  the  first  one  to  show  that  time  must  be 
ideal.  That  he  also  regarded  it  as  irreversible  and  as  a  condition 
of  moral  activity  does  more  credit  to  his  insight  than  to  his 
consistency.  Since  Kant,  idealism,  using  the  Kantian  weapons, 
has  made  short  work  of  a  real  serial  time.  I  agree  entirely 
with  the  Kantians  that  if  time  is  serial  it  must  be  regarded  as 
an  ideal  construction.  But  I  also  hold  that  philosophy  has 
emphasized  the  wrong  aspect  of  the  somewhat  ambiguous 
common-sense  concept.  The  flying,  fleeting,  evanescent  char- 
acter of  experience,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  primary  character  of 
time.  The  serial  character  is  secondary,  and  is  the  result  of 
a  posteriori  construction,  necessitated  by  the  real  time  char- 
acter. We  construct  past  and  future  because  our  contents 
have  the  time  character,  because  they  are  forever  going  and 
coming ;  contents  do  not  come  and  go,  arise  and  fade,  because 
of  our  series. 

To  define  what  time  is  we  must  discover  the  differentia  of 
time.  We  must  get  over  our  intellectual  slovenliness  in  simply 
dumping  things  together.  This  is  especially  true  of  time.  We 
have  been  too  prone  to  be  satisfied  when  we  have  reduced  it  to 
one  dimension  of  space,  to  number,  to  quantity,  to  causality, 
to  will,  and  what  not,  if,  indeed,  we  have  gotten  beyond  identi- 
fying it  with  the  stream  of  consciousness  as  a  whole.  No  doubt 
the  time  concept  has  important  relations  to  all  of  these  concepts. 
But  these  relations  are  obscured  by  the  neglect  of  differences 
which  fail  to  give  the  time  concept  any  assignable  significance. 


266  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

Such  obscurity  makes  time  as  a  logical  tool  for  describing  ex- 
perience worse  than  useless.  If  the  time  concept  makes  no 
difference  to  experience,  let  us  drop  it  out  altogether.  Using 
the  pragmatic  test,  then,  let  us  see  what  difference  time  makes 
to  experience. 

Do  you  say  that  time  is  a  series?  Then  by  what  mark  or 
quote  is  time  as  a  series  differentiated  from  all  other  series  con- 
cepts? To  illustrate  by  another  concept,  more  familiar: 
If  you  say,  for  example,  that  geometric  space  is  a  complex  of 
series,  you  have  at  most  mentioned  only  the  genus.  This 
would  not  differentiate  it  from  color  and  taste  series.  If  you 
say  with  Riemann  that  it  is  a  manifold,  you  have  again  fur- 
nished only  a  large  genus.  Obviously  what  differentiates 
geometric  space  as  series  from  the  other  series  or  group  concepts 
is  that  it  is  an  ideal  construction  of  extensive  data  or  is  an  ex- 
tensive  manifold.  Extensity  is  thus  the  character  that  dif- 
ferentiates space  series  from  other  concepts  of  the  kind  referred 
to.  If  we  now  return  to  time  as  serial,  we  must  here,  too,  dis- 
cover precisely  what  difference  it  makes  as  a  concept,  what 
marks  it  as  distinct  from  other  series  concepts.  The  answer 
you  get  when  you  ask :  What  sort  of  a  series  is  a  time  series  ? 
is  something  like  the  answer  of  a  friend  when  you  ask  him : 
When  are  you  going  to  Chicago  ?  and  he  replies :  Who  says  I 
am  going  to  Chicago  ?  Or  the  answer  in  algebra1  to  the  ques- 
tion :  What  positive  quantity  results  from  adding  4  and  —  8  ? 
and  you  get  the  answer  —  4.  The  answer  here  shows  that  the 
question  involved  a  wrong  presumption.  So  with  the  answer 
to  the  question :  What  are  the  differentia  of  a  time  series  ? 
The  answer  is  :  A  time  series  is  a  series  in  which  contents  keep 
passing  out  and  coming  in  and  in  which  no  position  can  be  de- 
nned with  reference  to  any  other  position,  because  every  po- 
sition is  shifting  in  value  with  reference  to  every  other.  In 
so  far,  in  other  words,  as  you  want  to  have  a  series  with  definite 
positions,  in  so  far  you  must  ignore  the  time  character  of  ex- 
perience. In  so  far,  again,  as  you  let  in  time,  your  serial  con- 
struction fails  to  define.  The  answer  to  the  question :  What 
sort  of  a  series  is  time?  seems  to  be  that  time  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed as  series  at  all. 

We  have  said  that  the  test  of  the  nature  of  time  must  be 


THE   NATURE    OF   TIME  267 

the  difference  it  makes  to  experience.  The  term  experience, 
however,  must  be  narrowed  down  for  logical  purposes.  There 
are  several  types  of  experience  and  reflective  experience  is  only 
one  of  these,  no  more  real  than  the  others.  But  what  we  are 
concerned  with  here  is  reflective  or  judging  experience.  The 
question  is :  What  difference  does  time  make  to  our  judging 
experience  and  to  other  forms  as  reported  to  this?  Evidently 
time  bears  a  peculiar  relation  to  the  law  of  contradiction.  The 
law  of  contradiction  is  only  applicable,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
if  you  exclude  time.  The  law  of  contradiction  says  that  dif- 
ferent judgments  cannot  be  made  with  reference  to  the  same 
point  in  our  space  system  and  in  the  same  respect.  But  that 
an  object  can  be  white  and,  where  it  is  white,  be  not- white; 
that  a  thing  can  both  be  and  not  be  in  the  same  place  —  are 
matters  of  everyday  experience.  A  theory  of  a  timeless  uni- 
verse would  break  down  under  its  own  contradictions.  Time, 
then,  is  that  aspect  of  experience  which  makes  it  both  possible 
and  necessary  to  make  different  judgments  with  reference  to 
the  same  point  in  reality  and  with  reference  to  the  same  at- 
tribute or  within  the  same  universe  of  discourse,  i.e.  to  judge 
that  reality  is  both  white  and  not-white,  warm  and  not-warm 
with  reference  to  the  same  point  in  space.  Here  the  law  of 
contradiction  is  not  violated.  It  simply  finds  a  new  dimension 
by  means  of  which  incompatible  judgments  can  refer  to  the 
same  objects,  without  proving  destructive. 

The  so-called  law  of  universality  proves  equally  an  abstrac- 
tion. Once  true  always  true  could  only  hold  in  a  timeless 
universe  or  by  abstracting  from  time.  Experience  shows 
too  clearly  that  neither  facts  nor  meanings  have  absolute  sta- 
bility. All  that  our  world  seems  to  yield  is  such  relative  uni- 
versality and  uniformity  as  enables  us  to  come  in  a  fair  way 
toward  agreement  and  to  anticipate  for  practical  ends  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature.  Thus  the  relative  and  instrumental  nature 
of  knowledge  becomes  evident. 

What  I  have  tried  to  show  is  that  time  does  make  a  difference, 
and  that  the  difference  it  makes  is  that  we  must  revise  our 
judgments  or  make  new  judgments  in  order  to  meet  the  re- 
quirements of  experience.  If  time  made  no  difference,  if  ex- 
perience could  be  described  as  well  without  it,  then  we  should 


268  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

have  one  eternal  moment  of  reality  with  a  timeless  scale  of 
values.  Once  seeming  true  would  be  always  seeming  true  in 
such  a  world. 

Time  may  be  spoken  of  as  a  non-being  character.  That  does 
not  mean  that  time  is  unreal.  What  time  does  is  something 
positive.  It  is  responsible  for  passing  away  and  novelty;  it 
creeps  into  the  intended  reality  and  so  makes  necessary  new 
judgments.  What  I  mean  by  placing  it  under  the  category  of 
non-being  is,  that  it  is  not  a  thing  or  energy,  though  it  makes 
positive  differences  to  the  world  of  energy.  Could  we  state 
reality  through  and  through  in  terms  of  quantitative  determi- 
nations, in  terms  of  constancies  and  repetitions,  we  should  have 
no  use  for  time.  Our  judgments  as  regards  the  factual  char- 
acter of  the  world,  if  once  true,  would  not  need  to  be  revised. 

Time  bears  a  different  relation  to  knowledge  from  that  of  the 
stuff  character  of  reality.  The  stuff  contents  of  experience, 
whether  individuals,  qualities,  or  relations,  have  a  place  within 
experience ;  they  are  particular  and  can  be  set  off  from  other 
contents,  or  pointed  to.  Blue  is  not  only  describable  as  dif- 
ferent from  other  contents  or  like  other  contents,  but  can  be 
indicated  as  a  particular  blue  fact  as  well.  Not  so  with  time. 
Time  is  known  only  through  its  other.  If  we  say  fleeting  or 
passing  we  must  think  of  fleeting  values,  not  of  fleeting  time. 
It  is  the  instability  of  our  facts  and  values  that  makes  us  sus- 
pect the  presence  of  the  time  character.  The  evidence  for  it 
is  thus  altogether  indirect,  i.e.  in  the  difference  it  makes  to 
our  meanings.  To  try  to  point  to  the  time  character,  as  we 
point  to  blue  or  red,  would  be  like  the  schoolmaster's  saying : 
"  I  see  some  boys  that  are  not  here." 

Time  knows  no  proximate  genus  under  which  it  can  be  sub- 
sumed. The  only  universe  of  discourse  that  can  be  framed  for 
it  is  reality  or  the  process  of  experience  as  dichotomized,  on  the 
one  hand,  into  being,  —  the  world  of  positive  facts  and  values, 
which  can  be  held  apart  from  their  context,  indicated  or  pointed 
to  as  well  as  described  in  terms  of  their  other,  —  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  into  the  negation  of  being,  the  transmutation  of 
facts  and  values.  In  the  process  of  experience  being  and  time 
are  thus  inseparably  locked  into  one  Hegelian,  Kilkenny-cat 
embrace.  This  ought  to  satisfy  even  the  most  voracious  He- 


THE   NATURE    OF   TIME  269 

gelian  appetite  for  opposition.  But  there  is  nothing  mystical 
about  the  time  character.  To  thus  negate  our  meanings,  to 
make  our  judgments  false  and  so  to  make  new  judgments  neces- 
sary is  precisely  its  character.  I  have  spoken  of  time  as  non- 
being,  not  because  I  regard  it  as  unreal,  but  because  it  negates 
that  which  is.  If  we  were  to  find  a  cold,  logical  equivalent  for 
the  warm  transitiveness  of  our  immediate  experience  we  should 
be  obliged  to  call  it  the  non-identity-of-what-is  character.  That 
is  a  very  cumbersome  adjective,  but  that  is  what  it  does. 

Accounting  for  transmutation  as  due  to  the  time  character 
may  be  regarded  as  a  lazy  way  of  getting  rid  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  describing  the  changes  or  sequences  in  our  experience. 
Not  so.  Transmutation  in  general  does  not  account  for  any 
particular  transmutation.  The  fact  that  physics  has  assumed 
motion  as  a  universal  property  of  bodies  has  not  saved  it  from 
the  responsibility  of  investigating  the  laws  of  motion  and  de- 
scribing the  particular  sequences.  That  time  is  a  property  of 
reality  simply  means  that  facts  are  unstable;  but  how  facts 
shall  be  transmuted,  the  quality  and  rate  of  transmutation, 
must  be  explained  by  their  own  structure  and  their  place 
within  the  system  of  facts.  The  concept  of  change  in  general 
stands  in  the  same  relation  to  the  particular  changes  that  the 
demand  for  law  in  general  stands  to  the  particular  laws  or 
connections. 

The  time  character  must  be  defined  as  absolute  negation  in 
order  to  differentiate  it  from  the  negative  judgment  as  ordi- 
narily employed.  The  latter  has  reference  to  contrasting  being 
with  being.  The  time  character  does  not  have  to  do  with  the 
fact  that  there  are  coexisting  differences  or  that  we  must  now 
make  different  judgments  in  regard  to  reality.  Rather  the 
time  character  has  to  do  with  difference  that  creeps  in  at  the 
same  point.  It  is  a  property  of  all  concrete  reality ;  not  only 
an  attribute  of  reflective  experience,  but  of  reality  whether  it 
is  reflective  or  a  lower  grade,  even  when,  perhaps,  in  its  own  right 
it  cannot  be  characterized  as  experience.  It  makes  such  a 
difference  to  reality  for  us  that  we  must  make  different  judg- 
ments of  what  would  otherwise  be  the  same.  By  absolute, 
therefore,  is  simply  meant  that  time  is  a  real  property  of  our 
experience- world,  subjective  and  objective,  and  not  a  deriva- 


270  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

tive  of  being  in  any  form,  as  the  Hegelians  would  have  it.  It 
cannot  be  deduced  by  any  a  priori  dialectic,  but  is  forced  upon 
our  will  in  trying  to  meet  its  world.  It  is  irreducible  as  red 
and  sweet  are  irreducible  qualities  of  experience;  but,  while 
these  are  specific  contents  which  can  be  marked  off  and  indi- 
cated, the  time  character  is  a  generic  adjective,  a  universal 
attribute  of  reality.  It  is  the  seed  of  instability  that  must  be 
conceived,  not  to  account  for  any  particular  motion,  change, 
or  variation,  but  for  motion  or  change  at  all.  The  particular 
transmutations  or  changes  must  be  accounted  for  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  existing  system  of  being,  given  this  all-pervasive 
property  of  time. 

I  have  tried  thus  to  give  the  concept  of  time  a  very  specific 
and  technical  meaning  in  our  logic  of  experience.  Not  that  I 
have  been  arbitrary  in  this.  On  the  contrary,  I  have  tried  to 
unravel  the  character  which  time  has  in  the  common  conscious- 
ness of  man,  confused  though  that  consciousness  may  be.  It  is 
also  the  character  which  we  need  in  order  to  make  our  descrip- 
tion of  experience  consistent  and  complete.  We  can  thus  pro- 
duce conceptual  continuity  and  flow  in  the  previously  static 
and  discontinuous  categories  of  our  logic — thus  make  the  wheels 
of  experience  go  round  in  thought  as  they  do  in  fact.  While 
our  logical  system  can  in  no  wise  be  a  substitute  for  the  warm 
and  concrete  process  of  experience,  it  ought  to  furnish  a  com- 
plete symbolism  for  concrete  experience. 

I  have  two  quarrels  with  idealistic  theories  so  far.  One  is 
that  even  though  reality  for  us  must  be  thought  of  as  experi- 
enced yet  all  experience  is  not  reflective,  and  cannot  therefore 
be  reduced  to  the  conceptual  type.  Concepts,  in  relation  to 
a  large  part  of  experience,  retain  an  instrumental  or  tool  char- 
acter. They  are,  with  reference  to  non-reflective  experience, 
merely  symbolic  equivalents  in  the  service  of  the  willing,  pur- 
posive moment.  But  my  other  quarrel  is  that  the  ontological 
conceptualists  have  failed  to  make  their  conceptual  scheme  ex- 
haustive. Hegelian  dialectic  at  best  keeps  jumping  on  one 
leg  in  its  attempt  at  a  static  scheme  of  reality.  Its  non-being 
is  not  differentiated  from  being.  But  we  need  the  negative 
concept  as  well  as  the  positive.  The  relativity  of  meanings  is 
as  obvious  a  fact  as  that  we  have  meanings.  This  relativity 


THE   NATURE    OP   TIME  271 

of  transmutation  cannot  be  exhausted  dialectically  within  the 
implications  of  one  eternal  system,  but  is  the  character  of 
experience  as  ascertained  a  posteriori  through  the  failure  of 
our  meanings  to  express  what  they  mean  to  express  —  the  na- 
ture of  a  changing  reality.  Not  one  system  of  meanings,  but 
ever  new  systems  of  meanings  are  required  in  our  world.  Thus 
reality  as  concrete  out-Hegels  Hegel  and  makes  ghosts  out  of 
our  logical  absolutes. 

I  know  this  definition  of  time  will  seem  abstract  to  my 
intuitionalist  friends;  and  they  are  right  that  we  must  not 
mistake  abstractions  for  realities.  But  without  abstraction 
and  conceptual  construction  we  should  have  no  science  or 
philosophy.  We  should  live  simply  in  the  immediate  moment. 
It  is  by  the  method  of  abstraction  that  we  discover  what  differ- 
ence facts  make  to  each  other  within  our  world.  Truth,  or 
conceptual  analysis  and  construction,  is  the  means  through 
which  the  concrete  will  strives  after  greater  completeness  of 
insight  and  appreciation.  It  is  this  concrete  and  active  self 
which  constructs  the  past  and  future  to  symbolize  its  own  con- 
ditions of  activity  as  a  time  subject.  It  is  this  concrete  self 
which  is  conscious  of  direction,  because  it  is  conscious  of  pur- 
pose ;  to  which  the  data  and  habits  of  the  now  are  only  a  means 
toward  the  realization  of  its  demands  for  unity  and  wholeness ; 
and  for  which,  therefore,  the  death  of  the  old  meanings  means 
the  birth  of  new  meanings  better  expressive  of  its  concrete  life. 
In  this  willing,  purposive,  changing  ego,  not  in  abstract  sys- 
tems of  categories,  lies  the  principle  of  negativity  through  which 
experience  is  ever  transcending  the  old  meanings,  and  ever 
reconstructing  itself  in  terms  of  new  meanings  and  systems. 

There  is  a  proper  and  improper  use  of  the  implicit*  There 
is  one  type  of  reality  in  which  idealistic  procedure  from  the 
implicit  to  the  explicit  is  at  home,  and  that  is  in  the  case  of  pur- 
posive wholes.1  We  must  take  account  of  the  various  elements 
or  moments  in  a  purposive  whole  as  indicating  the  next  step 

1  For  a  lucid  treatment  of  the  implicit  from  the  eternalist  point  of  view,  see 
an  article  by  Professor  J.  E.  Creighton,  "The  Notion  of  the  Implicit  in  Logic,  " 
Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  19,  pp.  53-62.  This  deals  with  the  subject  from  the 
retrospective  point  of  view  of  the  cognitive  moment,  not  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  creative  process  where  each  stage  is  individual,  and  must  be  recognized  in 
its  own  right  with  its  own  categories. 


272  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

—  the  next  note  of  the  melody,  the  next  act  of  the  drama,  the 
next  step  in  the  argument.  Wherever  facts  are  parts  of  a 
completed  whole,  they  must  be  prospective;  they  must  point 
forward,  even  though  they  do  not  get  their  definite  meaning 
until  they  are  seen  in  their  fulfillment.  There  is  a  timeless 
identity  in  a  purposive  whole,  and  the  meaning  of  the  parts  is 
fixed  by  their  already  determined  relationships.  The  novelty 
here  exists  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  learning  process. 
There  is  no  real  novelty  in  Hamlet.  It  is  different  with  the 
creative  process  —  the  creation  of  Hamlet,  the  construction  of 
the  argument,  the  organic  growth  process.  Here  there  are 
genuinely  new  steps.  Here  insight  grows.  A  new  individual 
context  is  created.  To  think  of  the  chicken  as  timelessly  im- 
plicit in  the  egg,  which  is  somtimes  true,  is  not  a  very  palatable 
idea.  In  a  really  edible  egg,  they  are  indeed  part  of  one  cre- 
ative growth  series,  but  they  are  different  individuals,  and 
must  be  taken  differently.  We  have  nothing  to  do  here  with 
a  quantitative  time  whole.  This  cannot  condition  growth  or 
realization.  We  have  to  do  with  real  time.  It  is  with  the 
reality  of  change  that  time  is  bound  up.  In  the  case  of  pro- 
cesses, which  to  all  intents  and  purposes  are  reversible,  or  which 
like  a  purposive  construction  can  be  viewed  at  once,  time  is 
reducible  to  pure  series,  which  simply  means  that  you  have 
practical  timelessness.  Time  is  not  here  efficacious. 

While  it  is  through  the  difference  which  time  makes  to  our 
purposive  striving  that  we  come  to  know  the  character  of  time, 
I  cannot  agree  with  Royce  that  time  itself  is  "  primarily  the 
form  of  will.  And  so  a  time  sequence  viewed  as  it  really 
is,  that  is,  as  a  rational  being  really  wills  it  to  be,  is  viewed  as 
a  sequence  of  novel  and  individual  events,  each  expressing 
somebody's  present  will  to  do  something  unique,  and  to  find  its 
place  in  the  world."  l  What  about  the  tragedy  of  finding  dif- 
ference where  our  loyalty  demands  sameness?  Moreover,  our 
willing  of  the  new  does  not  itself  create  it.  The  will  at  best 
projects  its  present  desire,  its  present  intention,  into  the  future. 
For  the  novel,  we  must  wait.  This  is  the  creative  contribution 
of  the  time  process  of  which  we  are  a  part,  and  in  regard  to  which 
in  the  words  of  Hamlet,  "the  main  thing  is  readiness."  When 

1  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  April,  1910,  p.  262. 


THE   NATURE   OF   TIME  273 

this  new  comes,  it  may  affect  our  willing,  as  well  as  the  object 
willed. 

I  do  not  see  how  we  can  be  said  to  will  what  we  do  not  now 
will  or  intend  what  we  do  not  now  intend.  The  new  meaning, 
however  minutely  we  may  analyze  the  conditions  of  its  appear- 
ance, must  be  looked  at  as  a  gift ;  it  is  not  taken  simply  out 
of  the  whole  cloth  of  the  old.  It  cannot  be  predicted,  there- 
fore. It  can  be  known  only  a  posteriori.  This  new  meaning 
can  no  longer  own  the  past  except  as  it  has  been  transmuted 
and  lives  in  the  present  meaning,  as  looked  at  from  its  point 
of  view.  In  it  is  the  hope  of  the  future  which  can  only  come 
through  the  death  of  the  present,  "when  we  dead  awaken." 

There  is  one  way  in  which  the  temporal  pluralistic  view  has 
the  advantage  over  the  static  in  its  relation  to  the  will  and  its 
striving ;  and  that  is  in  regard  to  promise  for  the  future.  In 
such  a  world  mistakes  are  not  irremediable.  Errors  can  be 
corrected,  illusions  can  be  set  straight,  evil  can  be  overcome. 
In  a  timeless  world  the  presence  of  wrong  and  perverse  view- 
points at  all  is  a  standing  disease  which  cannot  be  remedied. 
The  timeless  sin  of  Brahm  in  begetting  Maya  knows  no  logical 
redemption  at  any  rate;  and  the  mystical  solution  is  at  best 
a  veiled  way  of  denying  the  original  premise  and  recognizing 
the  value  of  process.  The  temporalistic  pluralist  can  take  a 
melioristic  view  of  the  world,  however  long  and  discouraging 
may  be  the  journey  from  brute  to  God. 

To  be  sure  this  advantage  has  to  be  paid  for,  like  every  ad- 
vantage in  our  finite  world.  In  a  temporal  world  there  is  no 
guaranty  that  the  future,  at  least  so  far  as  the  finite  individual 
is  concerned,  may  not  be  worse  than  the  past.  There  is  a 
tragic  element  in  the  blindness  and  groping  in  such  a  world,  which 
the  absolute  world  of  the  eternalist  does  not  know.  But  this 
temporal  world  seems  to  be  our  world,  and  so  we  have  to  make 
the  most  of  it.  It  is  a  world  at  least  where  the  sincere,  coura- 
geous man  can  count  —  can  help  to  create  his  own  future. 

Time  and  the  Judging  Process 

We  have  seen  that  the  character  of  time  must  be  the  difference 
it  makes  to  our  judging  process.  It  is  evident,  however,  that 
time  does  not  pertain  to  the  individual  act  of  judgment.  The 


274  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

parts  of  the  judgment  are  not  separated  in  time,  though  it  takes 
time  to  speak  the  judgment.  Each  judgment  is  a  timeless 
synthesis,  involving  an  ideal  reference  or  interpretation,  ab- 
stracted from  the  time  process.  Let  us  examine  somewhat 
more  in  detail  the  relation  of  time  to  the  process  of  judgment. 

Without  recognizing  the  reality  of  time,  the  judging  process 
itself  would  be  impossible.  The  act  of  judgment  presupposes 
that  certain  aspects  have  been  torn  loose  from  reality;  that 
contents,  more  general  and  permanent  than  the  rest,  have  been 
discriminated,  and  abstracted  in  the  process  of  experience,  and 
have  become  symbolic  of  other  contents.  In  a  static  world, 
where  being  lies  next  to  being  in  one  glassy  stare,  distinctions 
between  thought  and  reality  could  never  arise.  Meaning  and 
object  would  be  inseparably  agglutinated,  if,  indeed,  you  could 
assume  meanings  at  all  in  a  world  where  conduct  has  no  pro- 
spective significance.  Judgments  are  progressive  adjustments, 
which  are  possible  only  in  a  world  where  the  individual  is  de- 
pendent for  the  satisfaction  of  his  nature  upon  centers  of  reality 
beyond  his  own,  and  where,  through  a  process  of  interaction, 
supposition  and  verification,  the  fittest  adjustments  survive, 
and  make  it  possible  for  him  to  meet,  at  least  approximately, 
the  demands  of  the  other  centers  upon  him.  Judgments,  there- 
fore, both  as  regards  their  genesis,  and  as  regards  the  testing 
of  their  validity,  presuppose  process  and  plurality  as  involved 
in  the  constitution  of  reality.  The  possibility  of  judgments 
at  all  presupposes  negation,  not  negativity  in  general  as  an  ab- 
stract logical  category,  as  Bosanquet  has  it,  but  real,  dynamic 
negation  —  transmutation  as  opposed  to  static  positions  within 
a  system. 

Suppose,  in  the  first  place,  that  we  start  with  our  system  of 
truth  meanings.  To  be  sure,  this  is  an  inverting  of  real  pro- 
cedure, for  such  a  system  of  relations  is  a  way  which  the  pur- 
posive time  stream  of  tendency  has  of  objectifying  itself,  of 
making  clear  its  trend.  But  by  starting  with  the  truth  system, 
we  can  the  more  easily  discover  its  relativity,  and  so  find  the 
neglected  element.  Now,  in  thus  positing  the  system  of  truth 
relations,  we  come  up  against  the  fact  that  they  are  often  un- 
stable; that  while  we  intend  that  our  meanings  and  values 
shall  be  eternal ;  while  we  try  to  freeze  reality  into  a  static  mold, 


THE   NATURE   OF  TIME  275 

it  will  not  stay.  It  melts.  Time  creeps  into  our  system,  and 
we  must  revise  —  perpetually  revise  —  our  concrete  meanings. 
The  rationale  of  this  instability,  whether  subjective  or  objective, 
must  be  found  in  the  nature  of  the  real  world.  But  it  can  only 
be  made  part  of  our  system  of  truth  a  posteriori,  as  it  falsifies 
our  meanings,  eternal  though  they  intend  to  be. 

Secondly,  many  judgments  or  concepts,  we  have  seen,  can 
become  intelligible  as  regards  their  own  specific  significance, 
only  if  we  presuppose  such  an  attribute  of  real  non-being.  Such 
concepts  or  attitudes  as  past  and  future  are  not  exhausted  in 
our  ideal  spreading  out  of  our  memories  and  expectancies.  In 
a  static  world,  memory  and  expectancy  would  be  alike  mean- 
ingless. In  human  experience,  at  least,  there  is  real  vanishing 
of  contents,  and  real  novelty.  Contents  come  into,  and  slip 
out  from  our  attention  field.  There  is  a  transmuting,  at  least 
of  our  context  of  significance,  whether  the  real  objects  change 
or  not.  And  this  negation  is  part  of  reality.  Not  only  is  this 
true  of  the  concepts  which  in  a  special  way  are  bound  up  with 
the  time  character,  but  in  the  case  of  other  fundamental  con- 
cepts also  the  reality  of  process,  with  its  implied  negation  and 
novelty,  is  presupposed.  Thus  physical  continuity  becomes 
unintelligible  apart  from  process,  apart  from  the  fusing  of  one 
positive  characteristic  or  position  into  another,  as  for  example 
in  the  motion  of  the  point  in  drawing  a  line.  Positions  must 
be  looked  upon  as  abstractions  from  a  continuous  process. 
Even  geometrical  space,  the  type  of  the  coexistent  and  the  eter- 
nal, at  least  in  so  far  as  it  presupposes  continuity,  implies  mo- 
tion and  hence  implies  time.  Number  presupposes  cumulative 
process  for  its  significance.  The  number  consciousness  would 
be  impossible  in  a  static  world.  It  requires  the  transmutation 
of  our  meanings,  as  well  as  retentiveness,  to  make  counting 
possible.  The  formula,  n  +  1,  cannot  express  the  individual 
significance  of  the  cumulative  steps  of  number.  The  zero  of 
subtraction  in  mathematics,  as  in  x  —  y  =  0,  presupposes  at 
least  ideal  destruction  of  possibilities;  and  so  serves  to  sym- 
bolize the  destruction  of  real  alternatives  in  the  choices  of  the 
volitional  process.  The  concept  of  the  infinite,  again,  would 
be  impossible  except  for  a  thought  activity  which  can  abstract 
from  its  limitations  and  thus  conceive  itself,  in  obedience  to  a 


276  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

certain  law  or  purpose,  as  creative  of  new  steps,  "  world  without 
end." 

Thirdly,  the  incompatibility  of  our  judgments  and  attitudes 
which  claim  to  be  of  the  same  object  and  by  the  same  subject ; 
which  concern  reality  at  the  same  point  in  space  and  in  the  same 
respect,  makes  it  necessary  to  suppose  that  reality  at  the  same 
point  is  unstable,  has  a  history ;  that  our  judgments  vary,  be- 
cause they  are  made  concerning  a  different  reality,  or  by  a  dif- 
ferent subject;  that,  in  other  words,  we  have  different  strata 
of  transformations  of  being,  at  the  same  point,  necessitating 
different  judgments.  Whether  these  transformations  are  in 
the  real  subject  or  in  the  real  object,  does  not  matter.  Either 
or  both  may  be  the  case.  In  either  case  new  judgments  of 
reality  are  necessitated;  and  we  must  find  a  way  of  making 
our  judgments  consistent,  by  assuming  a  new  attribute  of  reality 
beside  that  of  stuff. 

Some  judgments  at  any  rate  are  relative  though  they  claim 
to  be  true.  This  relativity,  moreover,  does  not  pertain  to  their 
function  within  their  own  context.  We  are  taking  for  granted 
that  they  successfully  lead  to  the  object  which  they  intend 
then  and  there.  We  will  suppose  at  any  rate  that  the  Gauls 
are  such  and  live  in  such  places  and  in  such  social  relations  as 
Caesar  tells  us.  Why,  then,  should  his  description  fail  to  fit 
the  France  of  to-day?  Why  should  not  once  true  be  always 
true?  How  can  there  be  legitimately  conflicting  truths? 
We  must  account  for  the  discrepancy  of  judgments,  made  with 
reference  to  the  same  point  in  space  and  in  the  same  respect, 
without  contradiction.  We  can  have  different  judgments 
coexisting  in  regard  to  different  points  or  different  aspects; 
but  how  can  we  have  different  judgments  on  top  of  each  other, 
as  it  were,  and  claiming  the  same  point?  This  can  only  be 
because  of  a  certain  inherent  principle  of  diversity  or  non-iden- 
tity in  the  point  so  that  there  is  transmutation  of  its  being; 
or  because  a  different  subject  is  making  judgments  of  the  same 
identical  point.  We  must  introduce  a  non-spatial,  non-stuff 
attribute,  a  pure  dynamic  principle,  which  shall  necessitate  in- 
compatible judgments  with  regard  to  reality.  Whether  the 
difference  is  regarded  primarily  as  creeping  into  the  real  object, 
or  into  the  real  subject,  in  either  case,  it  means  ultimately 


THE   NATURE   OF  TIME  277 

incompatible  attitudes  toward  reality.  All  change  resolves 
itself  for  knowledge  into  a  change  of  point  of  view  or  new 
experience. 

We  can  define,  then,  the  relation  of  time  to  judgment :  Time 
is  that  attribute  of  the  real  subject-object,  which  makes  in- 
compatible judgments  (i.e.  different  judgments  as  regards  the 
same  aspect  of  reality  at  the  same  point)  necessary. 

This  time  character  of  reality  appears  nowhere  more  clearly 
than  in  our  quantitative  judgments  of  the  time  process.  "Let 
us  imagine  a  transcendental  being,  built  upon  the  principles  of 
the  eternalist  conception  of  reality,  paying  a  visit  to  our  em- 
pirical world  and  catching  sight  of  a  timepiece:  ' Hello  there/ 
he  says,  'what  is  that?'  On  being  told  that  this  is  an  instru- 
ment to  measure  time  with,  he  asks :  '  Well,  how  much  time  is 
it?7  He  is  told  that  it  is  one  hour  and  thirty  minutes.  'All 
right/  he  says,  'one  hour  and  thirty  minutes/  'No/  the  ter- 
restrial being  says,  'it  is  now  one  hour  and  thirty  minutes  and 
thirty  seconds.'  In  blank  astonishment  our  visitor  replies : 
'You  say  it  is  one  hour  and  thirty  minutes,  and  you  say  it  is 
one  hour  and  thirty  minutes  and  thirty  seconds,  which  do  you 
want  me  to  believe?'  'No/  the  terrestrial  says,  'it  is  one  hour 
and  thirty-one  minutes.'  'You  are  an  incorrigible  liar/  says 
the  visitor.  'No/  says  the  terrestrial,  'look  for  yourself.'  It  is 
just  one  hour  and  thirty-two  minutes.'  By  this  time  the 
language  of  the  transcendental  visitor  is  not  such  as  ought  to 
be  heard  by  mortal  man,  and  so  we  must  close  the  interview."  1 

Such  is  the  nature  of  time  that  no  measurement  of  time  can 
be  absolute.  For  given  any  quantitative  description  of  the 
flowing  process  in  terms  of  hour,  minute,  and  second,  and  the 
statement  must  be  continually  revised.  If  you  make  time  a 
quantitative  series,  you  must  introduce  a  second  series  to  meas- 
ure the  time  of  the  measuring  process,  which  itself  is  a  time 
process.  But  in  this  way,  your  time  concept  would  always 
leak.  You  would  have  to  refer  to  another  standard  ad  infinitum  ; 
you  would  never  reach  time.  The  judgments  of  time  become 
infinite.  An  infinite  number  of  serial  perspectives  are  required, 
which  merely  means  that  time  itself  is  not  a  series,  but  lies  in 
another  dimension  from  the  world  of  description,  yet  condi- 

1  Quoted  from  "Time  and  Reality,"  pp.  23  and  24. 


278  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

tions  that  world  and  furnishes  the  rationale  of  our  attempts 
at  serial  construction.  The  reality  of  time  is  thus  forced  upon 
us  by  this  instability  of  the  universe,  including  the  universe 
of  truth.  Change  could  not  be  produced,  as  modern  science 
seems  to  imply,  by  the  mere  juxtaposition  of  static  entities  or 
substances.  We  need  a  negative  property,  as  well  as  positive 
properties,  to  make  change  possible.  We  depend  indeed  upon 
the  nature  processes  to  do  the  work,  we  can  merely  arrange  the 
conditions.  But  we  must  not  suppose  that  the  abstract  con- 
ditions, which,  taken  alone,  would  remain  eternal  fixtures, 
exhaust  the  nature  of  process. 

The  question  might  still  arise  whether  this  conception  of 
non-being  should  be  called  by  the  name  of  time,  or  whether 
that  does  not  more  properly  belong  to  the  Kantian  concep- 
tion. To  this,  I  would  answer  that  the  above  conception  is 
implied  as  the  fundamental  aspect  of  time,  both  by  common 
experience  and  science.  By  time,  the  unsophisticated  at  least 
do  not  mean  merely  the  measure  of  time  or  the  chronological 
series,  but  passing  units  or  a  moving  series.  And  the  passing 
or  moving  is  more  fundamental  to  the  conception  than  the 
units  or  the  series.  Should  the  procession  of  years  stop,  we 
all  recognize  that  time  would  be  no  more.  When  we  speak  of 
time,  it  is  that  time  flies ;  time  is  on  the  wing ;  time  slips  away ; 
time  passes;  time  steals  upon  us;  time  creeps  in,  etc.  The 
time  concept  cannot  be  exhausted  in  our  static,  timeless  chrono- 
logical picture.  We  must  rather  recognize  this  picture  as 
conventional.  We  must  identify  time  with  the  going  on  of 
process,  instead  of  with  the  conventional  measure  of  process 
—  as  "  sticking  in  being  "  and  making  it  unstable.  Common 
experience  is  here  saner  than  Aristotle  and  Kant. 

There  is  no  other  way  of  defining  time  which  is  not  circular. 
You  cannot  define  time  and  leave  time  out.  Define  time  as 
the  number  of  motion,  or  the  measure  of  time,  as  is  done  by 
Plato  and  Augustine  (who  conceive  time  to  originate  with  the 
solar  system),  and  you  have  the  circle  of  using  as  definition  a 
concept  already  involving  time,  for  motion  requires  both  time 
and  space,  beside  mass  for  its  definition.  And  there  is  no  mea- 
sure of  motion,  including  the  earth-clock,  which  is  not  relative 
to  time.  Identify  time,  again,  with  the  order  series  of  number, 


THE   NATURE    OF   TIME  279 

and,  beside  producing  confusion  of  names,  you  find  that  num- 
ber as  successive  acts,  with  cumulative  meaning  and  novelty, 
already  implies  the  time  concept.  The  same  will  be  true  of 
any  definition  which  treats  of  time  as  relative. 

Time,  however,  is  not  change,  but  the  condition  of  change. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  time  itself  changes,  though 
it  makes  our  values  unstable,  creeps  into  our  equations.  The 
chains  of  necessity  will  not  hold  reality  within  the  mechanical 
construction  of  our  three  dimensional  geometrical  space. 
Facts  slip  away,  and  creep  in,  which  require  another  dimension. 

Having  once  defined  the  real  time  character,  we  can  easily 
account  for  the  serial  aspect  of  experience  as  expressed  in  the 
psychological  series  of  past,  present,  and  future.  These  do  not, 
by  their  sum,  constitute  time.  They  are  derivatives,  on  the 
contrary,  ideal  constructions  or  will-attitudes,  necessitated 
by  the  relation  of  the  time  character  of  experience  to  the  struc- 
ture character,  and  remain  to  the  end  relative.  The  past  is 
the  attitude  toward  the  content  which  time  has  negated  and 
transformed,  and  which  therefore  can  no  longer  as  such  be 
acted  upon ;  the  present  is  the  sense  of  real  activity,  or  the  going 
on  of  process;  the  future  is  the  expectancy,  the  prospective 
attitude  toward  the  coming  or  new  content,  the  field  of  real 
possibility.  The  irreversibility  of  the  concrete  past,  on  our 
theory,  is  not  ideal  merely,  but  is  due  to  the  real  negating  and 
transforming  of  the  world  of  experience  for  which  the  present 
symbols  stand. 

While  the  irreversible  character  of  process  has  generally  been 
conceded,  it  has  not  always  been  made  clear  in  what  sense 
process  is  irreversible.  It  is  clear  that  the  nature  of  the  process 
must  be  taken  into  account  in  order  to  define  its  irreversibility. 
The  more  complexly  organized  a  process  is,  the  more  essentially 
irreversible  it  will  be  found  to  be.  Thus  simple  processes,  such 
as  are  found  in  the  inorganic  world,  are  practically  reversible, 
so  far  as  our  crude  averages  are  concerned.  Indeed,  reversi- 
bility is  a  postulate  of  the  physical  sciences.  There  is,  however, 
a  limitation  even  here,  in  that  available  energy  is  in  part  dissi- 
pated in  every  activity.  There  are  difficulties,  too,  in  the  limi- 
tation of  our  control  as  in  mending  the  broken  china.  When 
we  deal  with  organic  processes,  irreversibility  seems  more  of 


280  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

the  real  nature  of  the  process.  We  cannot,  with  the  means 
in  our  control,  reverse  the  process  from  childhood  to  old  age, 
and  so  death  in  multicellular  structures  at  any  rate  remains 
for  us  an  inevitable  fact.  In  our  social  relations,  there  are 
various  degrees  of  irreversibility.  We  may  injure  our  friend, 
make  restitution,  and  be  forgiven.  It  is  not  true  in  such  a 
case  that  the  past  is  irrevocable  in  the  sense  that  it  cannot  be 
altered.  Not  only  can  it  be  changed,  but  the  result  may  even 
be  heightened  in  value  because  of  the  correction  of  past  errors, 
and  the  atonement  for  past  mistakes.  Mary  Magdalene  may 
be  more  of  a  saint  for  having  been  purified  from  seven  devils. 
But  whether  the  past  is  transformed  for  better  or  worse,  his- 
tory cannot  be  the  same  as  though  the  past  had  not  been.  The 
past,  moreover,  may  be  in  large  part  beyond  repair,  owing  to 
our  changing  finite  conditions.  The  friend  we  injured  may 
be  dead  when  we  awake  to  repentance;  and  while  a  merciful 
humanity  and  a  merciful  God  may  give  us  another  chance,  as 
we  feel  that  the  latter  will  do,  the  objective  injury  so  far  as  our 
limited  view  point  goes,  is  irreparable.  In  any  case,  while  the 
past  is  ever  transformed  in  the  course  of  the  process  —  im- 
proved or  deteriorated  by  being  taken  up  into  the  context  of 
the  ongoing  stream  —  the  deed  cannot  be  undone  in  the  sense 
that  it  does  not  count.  It  conditions  for  better  or  worse  the 
character  of  the  transformation  with  its  creative  uniqueness. 
The  advantage  of  the  temporal  view  of  the  world  is  that  it  does 
not  make  us  slaves  of  the  past.  New  beginnings  can  be  made. 
Melioration  is  possible.  Not  only  can  the  future  be  better 
than  the  past,  but  the  past  itself  may  come  to  have  new  sig- 
nificance and  value  for  being  taken  up  into  a  more  compre- 
hensive future. 

Our  universe  may  be  conceived  as  floating  in  time,  as  it  does 
in  space.  But  the  character  of  time  as  opposed  to  space  is  to 
make  a  difference  to  contents.  What  difference  it  makes 
depends  upon  the  organization  of  the  contents.  As  there  are 
relations  which  are  extra-spatial,  so  there  may  be  relations  that 
are  extra-temporal.  It  is  not  necessary  to  the  belief  in  the 
reality  of  time  to  prove  that  all  facts  or  relations  must  be 
subject  to  time.  But  admit  time  at  all,  in  the  smallest  way, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  reduce  it  to  a  function  of  a  static  system. 


THE   NATURE   OF  TIME  281 

There  may  be  truths  or  relations  to  which  time  is  irrelevant. 
As  there  are  certain  relations,  such  as  number  relations,  which 
are  independent  of  space,  so  there  may  be  certain  formal  re- 
lations which  are  independent  of  time.  Time  may  be  irrelevant 
to  the  formal  relation,  2  +  2  =  4,  once  the  relation  is  dis- 
covered, however  much  it  is  implied  in  the  genesis  of  our  judg- 
ment. Whether  any  truths  are  actually  thus  timeless  is  a 
matter  for  experience  to  show  and  cannot  be  proved  a 
priori.  Even  the  law  of  contradiction  is  hypothetical,  de- 
pendent upon  the  permanency  of  our  mental  constitution, 
though,  of  course,  we  cannot  conceive  a  universe,  without 
presupposing  it. 

Does  the  flow  of  the  total  time  process  have  a  definite  form 
quality?  Is  it  spiral  or  some  other  form?  We  cannot  say  by 
empirical  induction.  We  can  deal  only  with  our  piecemeal 
finite  experience.  History  seems  to  indicate  a  sort  of  spiral 
periodicity  of  human  experience;  but  even  here  the  data  are 
far  too  complex,  and  the  span  at  our  disposal  too  brief  to  make 
any  definite  generalization  possible.  Several  independent 
variables  must  be  taken  account  of  in  race  evolution.  We  have 
no  longer  Hegel's  confidence  in  the  a  priori  construction  of 
history.  Some  overlapping  there  is,  some  cumulation  of  mean- 
ing. Else  history  were  in  vain.  But  there  does  not  seem  to  be 
a  continuous  process  of  development,  as  in  the  drama.  New 
motives,  whether  due  to  race  differences,  to  different  traditional 
backgrounds,  or  to  profound  variations  brought  in  by  in- 
dividual genius,  serve  to  give  history  a  new  direction,  and  make 
it  difficult  to  find  a  standard  of  comparison.  Whether  Greek 
or  Gothic  architecture  is  superior  cannot  be  decided  by  any 
conventional  measuring  rod.  Each  is  uniquely  satisfying 
within  its  own  temperamental  and  psychological  setting. 
While  in  the  case  of  our  practical  ideals,  we  would  seem  to  be 
on  surer  ground,  we  must  remember  that  here,  too,  the  scale  of 
values  varies  all  the  way  from  self-assertiveness  to  self-renun- 
ciation ;  and  we  can  by  no  means  be  sure  that  our  passion  for 
doing  things  is  superior  to  the  peace  which  passeth  under- 
standing. Without  any  dogmatic  theory  about  progress,  it 
behooves  us  to  profit  by  the  past,  and,  so  far  as  we  are  able, 
to  enter  into  sympathetic  communion  with  it. 


282  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Finally,  it  would  be  neither  desirable  nor  possible  to  dis- 
sociate time  completely  from  its  secondary  or  phenomenal  char- 
acter, the  chronological  series.  Language  has  once  for  all 
included  this,  just  as  we  speak  of  the  setting  sun  even  after 
the  Copernican  theory.  The  conventional  aspect  of  time  has 
its  convenience  and  relative  truth,  too. 


CHAPTER  XV 

TlME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC1 

IN  trying  to  meet  the  problems  of  life  and  conduct,  we  have 
found  that  we  cannot  deal  with  reality  merely  on  the  basis 
of  our  three  dimensional  spatial  scheme  of  relations.  We 
have  meanings,  somehow,  which,  while  once  truthful,  cease  to 
apply  to  the  world  as  we  find  it.  How  shall  we  locate  these 
perspectives  of  value  which,  though  true  in  their  own  setting, 
no  longer  fit  the  perceptual  world  ? 

One  thing  is  certain,  we  cannot  take  time  as  serial  and  still 
meet  the  demands  of  experience.  We  cannot  conceive  of  time 
as  serial  without  making  both  truth  and  reality  impossible. 
Make  time  serial  in  character  and  you  have  this  dilemma : 

1.  If  you  assume  your  time  series  to  be  real,  then  you  have 
the  coexistence  of  an  indefinite  number  of  real,  exclusive  mo- 
ments claiming  the  same  space,  for  each  moment  of  time  claims 
the  whole  of  concrete  perception  with  its  dimensions.     But 
reality  cannot  be  both  one  and  many  in  the  same  respect,  hence 
reality  becomes  impossible. 

2.  But  if  the  time  series  is  regarded  as  ideal,  then  we  have 
an  indefinite  number  of  descriptions  or  judgments,  each  ex- 
clusive of  the  other,  and  each  referring  to  the  same  reality  at  the 
same  point.     Hence  our  descriptions  or  judgments  claiming 
to  be  diverse,  and  yet  of  one  reality,  in  the  same  respect,  are 
contradictory,  and  truth  becomes  impossible. 

The  only  possible  solution,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  is 
to  regard  time  as  non-serial  or  prior  to  series,  and  to  regard 
series  as  a  derivative  construction.  Time  must,  somehow,  be 
involved  as  a  property  of  the  real,  conditioning  the  whole  world 
of  subjective  construction. 

If  we  take  an  historical  illustration,  the  contradiction  that 
confronts  us  is  that  we  have  many  systems  of  ideas  pretending 

*In  this  chapter  I  have  drawn  freely  from  "Time  and  Reality,"  Chapter  V. 

283 


284  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

to  express  the  same  fact.  If  we  take  Rome  as  our  fact,  we 
have  many  Rome  systems  which  all  assert  their  reality.  Thus 
we  have  the  Rome  of  Victor  Emmanuel  and  the  system  of  re- 
lations clustering  about  it.  We  have  also  the  Rome  of  the 
Napoleonic  era,  the  Rome  sacked  by  the  Vandals,  the  Rome 
where  Caesar  was  assassinated,  the  Rome  of  the  Gracchi,  etc. 
The  peculiar  thing  about  every  one  of  these  systems  is  that 
they  all  equally  assert  their  own  reality,  every  one  is  complete 
and  exclusive  of  the  others.  Actually,  however,  the  Rome  of 
Victor  Emmanuel  is  the  only  one  that  in  1916  A.D.  corresponds 
to  the  perceptual  content  Rome,  or  can  interact  with  the  real 
moment  of  living  interest ;  and  so  the  others  are  excluded  from 
existence.  Furthermore,  the  present  system  of  relations  is 
complete,  entirely  apart  from  the  other  systems.  The  latter 
have  nothing  to  do  with  international  relations.  They  cannot 
be  reached  by  gunpowder.  They  are,  therefore,  anomalies. 
They  assert  their  reality,  however;  unlike  the  mermaids  and 
centaurs  they  are  entirely  in  agreement  with  the  scientific 
canons  of  possibility ;  they  really  refer  to  the  perceptual  con- 
tent, Rome,  but  fail  to  fit  it.  They  all  say,  we  are  Rome,  but 
only  one  system  seems  to  be  able  to  command  present  belief. 

But  the  earlier  systems  which  fail  of  perceptual  verification 
in  the  now  are  the  products  of  the  same  activity  and  the  same 
tests  as  the  system  which  now  is  valid.  If  there  is  no  way  of 
making  the  earlier  systems  consistent  with  the  present,  we  must 
not  only  declare  them  false,  but  we  must  doubt  the  possibility 
of  ideal  systematization,  that  is,  of  truth,  at  all.  We  must, 
therefore,  find  some  means  of  harmonizing  our  conflicting  or 
duplicate  ideal  systems,  if  truth,  is  to  be  possible ;  and  if  truth 
is  not  possible,  then  we  must  stop  philosophizing.  We  cannot 
fall  back  on  the  absolute  for  truth.  Truth  means  ideal  har- 
mony for  us.  Ideas  do  not  transcend  themselves;  they  are 
our  leadings  and  must  be  harmonized  within  our  experience. 
Nor  can  we  fall  back  on  immediate  experience  when  thought 
fails.  We  cannot  say  that  we  have  intuition,  which  is  not 
present  intuition,  and  so  intuition  of  pastness  or  futurity ;  the 
contexts  which  symbolize  the  past  must  be  intuited  as  figuring 
in  our  present  experience.  What  shall  we  do  then  with  the 
superfluous  systems  which  have  no  real  relations  with  the  now  ? 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  285 

It  is  evident  that  we  must  introduce  a  new  factor  to  get  over 
the  contradiction. 

What  we  actually  do  in  our  scheme  of  history  is  to  arrange 
these  systems  with  reference  to  the  perceptual  present  and  af- 
firm them  all  true  except  for  time.  The  systems  are  arranged 
teleologically,  as  nearly  as  we  can,  in  an  ideal  series,  time  ac- 
counting for  the  conflicting  reality  claims.  To  know  what  the 
historic  past  and  future  are,  becomes  then  easy,  because  we 
see  that  they  are  our  constructions  to  account  for  experience, 
and  that  they  have  no  reality  except  for  our  positing  them 
as  such  explanations.  As  such,  however,  they  point  to  some 
fundamental  property,  which  must  explain  the  present  dis- 
crepancy. 

Take,  again,  the  case  of  motion  —  of  Zeno's  arrow.  The 
discrepancy  is  the  same  as  before.  We  have,  once  more,  a 
number  of  systems  of  relations  which  all  pretend  to  mean  or 
express  the  nature  of  the  same  fact.  These  systems  are  all 
exclusive  of  each  other.  At  any  one  point  in  space,  and  at 
any  one  moment  in  time,  the  system  of  relations  of  the  arrow 
is  complete ;  we  have  at  that  point  and  moment  a  whole  uni- 
verse, a  perfect  quantitative  system  of  relations.  At  another 
point  we  have  an  equally  complete,  but  a  different  system  to 
express  the  same  fact  —  the  flight  of  the  arrow.  We  have, 
therefore,  in  so  far  as  the  movement  of  the  arrow  furnishes 
us  a  line  which  is  infinitely  divisible,  an  infinite  number  of  pos- 
sible points  and  an  infinite  number  of  possible  systems,  all 
defining  or  pretending  to  define  the  same  arrow.  Furthermore, 
these  universes  coexist  ideally,  and  all  claim  to  be  real ;  none, 
however,  really  expresses  the  flight  of  the  arrow.  The  ideal 
systems,  in  so  far  as  they  pretend  to  express  the  meaning  of  the 
movement,  are  not  only  all  contradictory,  but  all  false,  pro- 
vided we  cannot  reconcile  them  in  a  new  dimension.  This  is 
made  possible  by  introducing  time,  a  fact  which  does  not  as 
such  appear  in  any  system,  but  accounts  for  the  possibility  of 
the  ideal  coexistence  of  these  systems.  It  is  just  this  impos- 
sibility of  getting  along  without  time  which  has  led  some  scien- 
tists, as  Lagrange,  to  introduce  it  as  a  fourth  dimension,  though 
time  itself  is  not  a  dimension  of  relations,  but  rather  the  rationale 
of  a  unique  non-spatial  dimension. 


286  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 


A  New  Dimension 

The  past  is  such  an  ideal  dimension.  Our  serial  construction 
of  chronology  exists  nowhere  except  in  our  way  of  treating  the 
facts.  This  is  equally  true  of  the  spatial  scheme  of  dimen- 
sions. The  Cartesian  coordinates  exist  only  as  our  conceptual 
tools.  Dimensions  are  ways  in  which  we  find  it  convenient  to 
symbolize  relations.  In  each  case,  however,  there  is  a  factual 
basis  for  our  ideal  construction.  We  no  more  make  the  char- 
acter of  the  past,  than  we  make  our  perceptual  world  in  space, 
by  taking  account  of  it  in  terms  of  our  purposes.  In  each  case, 
we  find  it  convenient  to  spread  out  our  facts  in  a  certain  order 
in  our  attempt  to  orient  ourselves  to  our  world.  We  can  make 
our  world  consistent  and  practically  intelligible  only  by  spread- 
ing out  the  past  in  a  dimension  of  its  own,  independent  of  the 
world  of  space  perception.  While  we  may  utilize  spatial  meta- 
phors, such  as  the  line,  in  symbolizing  the  past,  it  is  based  upon 
another  set  of  values  from  space  dimensions  —  values  of  suc- 
cession and  becoming,  instead  of  coexistence  and  constancy. 
The  dimension  of  the  past  is  as  much  necessitated  by  the  de- 
mands of  experience  as  are  the  spatial  dimensions  of  the  present. 
In  each  case  social  agreement  has  abstracted  from  what  is  per- 
sonal and  unique  in  our  individual  perspectives  and  emphasized 
those  features  which  are  relevant  to  common  understanding 
and  action. 

There  are  two  things  of  which  we  must  take  account  in  order 
to  understand  the  nature  of  the  past.  In  the  first  place,  the 
past  has  a  non-being  aspect,  without  which  it  could  not  mean 
past  at  all.  The  past  world  exists  no  longer  as  perceptual; 
it  exists  only  as  it  has  been  taken  up  in  the  ongoing  move- 
ment of  history.  The  Greeks  are  no  longer  besieging  Troy, 
Caesar  is  no  longer  crossing  the  Rubicon,  though  those  experi- 
ences are  continuous  in  history  with  events  and  civilizations 
now  real.  The  question  arises,  however,  if  the  past  world  is 
a  world  of  non-being  as  contrasted  with  present  perception, 
why  should  we  have  even  the  ideal  construction  of  such  a  world  ? 
How  can  we  mean  or  refer  to  such  a  world  at  all? 

This  leads  us  to  the  second  aspect.  The  reason  that  we  can 
construct  the  past  at  all  is  that  it  involves,  besides  this  quali- 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  287 

fication  of  non-being,  contexts  of  content  within  the  present 
that  give  us  a  basis  for  our  past  construction.  The  past  is  not 
a  mere  fiction.  It  is  not  for  us  to  make  history  as  we  please. 
While  the  past  has  no  independent  existence  of  its  own,  it  has 
a  factual  basis  within  the  present  which  we  cannot  ignore.  We 
reconstruct  the  past  from  present  records.  Perhaps  I  can  make 
this  clearer  by  an  analogy.  If  we  examine  the  geological  strata, 
we  find  the  basis  within  them  of  a  certain  series.  There  are, 
indeed,  no  past  layers.  All  the  strata  are  present  strata; 
all  the  characteristics  are  now  characteristics.  Should  the 
mountain  become  conscious  of  itself,  however,  it  could  con- 
struct a  series  of  conditions,  no  longer  existing,  to  account  for  its 
present  character.  A  better  illustration  would  be  a  tree.  A 
tree  has  various  layers  or  rings  that  enable  us  to  tell  something 
about  the  history  of  it.  Suppose  the  tree  should  become  self- 
conscious,  it  could  construct  a  series  of  conditions  to  account 
for  its  present  state ;  and,  if  it  did  construct  such  a  series 
at  all,  it  would  have  to  construct  it  in  a  certain  way,  owing  to 
its  present  character.  Yet  there  are  no  past  layers  or  rings. 
There  is  only  the  present  tree  as  an  organic  unity,  suffused  with 
present  sap,  though  the  old  layers  retain  a  certain  individuality 
of  their  own  in  the  present  structure. 

So  our  reflective  moment  discovers  within  itself  certain 
characteristics,  certain  survivals  in  the  way  of  memory,  as 
within  the  individual  organism,  or  of  records  which  are  the* 
survivals  within  the  larger  social  processes.  These  make  it 
possible  to  construct  an  order  or  series  of  attitudes,  constituting 
history.  The  feeling  of  duration  itself  is  a  present  feeling, 
however  much  it  may  help  us  in  giving  significance  to  the 
ideal  construction  of  a  past-series.  If  we  choose  to  construct 
such  a  series,  however,  the  present  character  of  reality  makes 
it  necessary  to  recognize  a  certain  kind  of  order,  which  has  a 
real  or  factual  basis  within  the  present.  Each  successive  mo- 
ment in  the  series  must  be  such  as  to  supplant,  to  occupy  the 
space  of,  and  to  exclude  the  reality  of  each  preceding  moment. 

Moreover,  such  a  construction  is  necessary  in  order  to  make 
the  present  reflective  moment  intelligible  at  all.  If  the  birth 
and  the  funeral  and  all  the  intervening  stages  were  thrown  to- 
gether in  one  promiscuous  mass,  experience  would  be  a  hope- 


288  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

less  chaos.  The  individual  attitudes  or  meanings,  with  which 
history  deals,  are  exclusive  of  each  other,  each  claims  the  whole 
universe  for  its  own.  fills  the  whole  of  space  with  its  three 
dimensions.  The  point  of  view  of  the  Homeric  world,  with  its 
gods  and  heroes ;  the  point  of  view  of  the  age  of  Pericles  with 
its  art  and  its  philosophy ;  the  world  of  Caesar  with  its  conquests 
and  its  political  ideals,  each  fills  the  universe  with  its  presence, 
and  does  not  recognize  the  reality  of  the  other.  In  such  a 
babel  of  tongues,  a  timeless  view  of  the  world  would  simply 
have  to  commit  suicide  by  abandoning  the  law  of  contradiction 
altogether. 

The  confusion  can  be  resolved,  if  we  regard  experience  as 
making  itself  anew,  if  we  regard  the  universe  as  essentially  cre- 
ative, at  least  in  spots.  To  some  extent,  it  accumulates  past 
experience  into  present  structure,  as  well  as  transforms  present 
structure  into  new  experience.  Each  moment  of  experience 
brings  its  sense  of  order  with  it,  spreads  its  content  out  into 
its  spatial  and  other  ideal  series.  There  is  no  inconsistency 
any  longer  in  each  point  of  view  claiming  the  whole  universe. 
Each  individual  meaning  claims  its  universe.  When  the  old 
meaning  and  its  universe  are  taken  account  of  by  a  new  point 
of  view  in  a  new  universe,  the  old  point  of  view,  in  so  far  as  it 
was  valid,  and  the  old  universe  which  it  meant,  still  are  seen  to 
fit  each  other,  and  no  attempt  is  made  to  rob  the  old  meaning 
of  its  universe. 

Thus  the  present  real  self,  "  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,"  finds 
it  convenient  to  look  upon  itself  as  one  out  of  a  series  of  universes, 
which  have  been  retransmuted  and  superseded,  in  order  to  un- 
derstand its  own  constitution  and  define  its  own  expectancies. 
This  is  true  not  only  in  regard  to  the  spreading  out  of  the  past 
will-attitudes  into  history  proper.  The  self  also  finds  it  con- 
venient to  spread  out  the  world  below  the  level  of  experience 
into  an  evolutionary  series  in  order  better  to  understand  the 
present  forms  of  being  and  their  characteristics;  and  thus  we 
have  theories  of  biological  and  geological  evolution  and  nebular 
hypotheses.  Here  we  translate  that  which  knows  no  internal 
meaning  into  meaning  and  history  for  our  own  convenience, 
on  the  basis  of  certain  structural  characteristics,  as  they  exist 
for  us. 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  289 

Knowledge  of  the  Present  and  the  Past  Contrasted 

The  present  is  the  field  of  scientific  observation  and  practical 
attitudes.  Science  deals  with  a  now  constitution  of  reality, 
on  the  basis  of  which  we  can  link  our  facts  and  anticipate  the 
behavior  of  things.  To  obtain  such  uniformities,  science  neces- 
sarily abstracts  from  the  individual  aspect  of  things,  and  se- 
lects out  of  reality  the  constant  qualities  and  attitudes,  con- 
venient but  only  part  of  reality.  Ethics,  on  the  other  hand, 
aims  to  deal  with  reality  as  concrete  and  individual.  It  deals 
with  the  adjustment  of  individuals  to  each  other  in  social  life, 
in  which  alone  they  can  realize  their  needs. 

There  is  a  peculiar  quality  about  the  real  relationships  to 
the  present  social  context  of  experience,  which  the  symbolic 
past  lacks  —  that  of  living  response  or  reciprocity.  We  must 
recognize  the  other  personal  contexts,  not  merely  as  having 
their  own  meaning,  but  as  capable  of  sympathetic  participation 
with  us.  This  has  been  strikingly  brought  out  by  Plato  in  the 
"Phaedrus,"  where  he  discusses  the  advantages  of  living  com- 
munication over  written  records.  "Writing,"  Socrates  is  made 
to  say,  "is  unfortunately  like  painting;  for  the  creations  of 
the  painter  have  the  attitude  of  life,  and  yet,  if  you  ask  them 
a  question,  they  preserve  a  solemn  silence.  And  the  same  may 
be  said  of  speeches.  You  would  imagine  that  they  had  intel- 
ligence, but  if  you  want  to  know  anything  and  put  a  question 
to  one  of  them,  the  speaker  always  gives  one  unvarying  answer. 
And  when  they  have  once  been  written  down,  they  are  tossed 
about  anywhere  among  those  who  do  and  among  those  who 
do  not  understand  them.  And  they  have  no  reticences  or 
proprieties  toward  different  classes  of  persons ;  and,  if  they  are 
unjustly  assailed  or  abused,  their  parent  is  needed  to  protect 
his  offspring,  for  they  cannot  protect  themselves." 

What  is  lacking,  then,  in  these  past  minds,  incarnated  into 
the  spiritual  body  of  language  or  looking  at  us  through  the 
marble  or  painting?  A  meaning  of  their  own  they  evidently 
possess,  which  we  must  respect  and  appreciate.  They  express 
definite  attitudes.  They  have  a  purpose  of  their  own.  They 
are  the  soul  in  an  individual  act,  the  stereotyped  expression  of 
an  individual  insight,  made  eternal  by  being  isolated  from  the 


290  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

stream  of  personal  history.  But  while  taken  out  of  their  per- 
sonal history,  they  continue  to  figure  as  purposes  and  energies 
within  social  history.  As  part  of  the  history  of  the  social  mind 
of  a  people,  of  a  race  or  of  humanity  they  continue  to  grow, 
to  spread,  to  energize  the  life  of  the  race.  They  retain  their 
individuality  within  the  great  and  ever-moving  social  consti- 
tution. What  they  have  lost  by  being  thus  socialized  and 
given  an  artificial  body  is  their  individual  feeling  of  value. 
They  are  incapable  of  individual  sympathy  with  our  flesh- 
enveloped  minds. 

The  dialectic  of  the  past,  in  other  words,  is  a  one-sided 
affair.  The  living  speaker  develops  his  meaning  of  the  past  to 
his  own  satisfaction,  and  that  is  all  that  can  be  asked.  Future 
moments  may  find  the  present  meaning  partial  and  unsatis- 
factory, but  the  real  past  itself  makes  no  emotional  response, 
says  neither  yes  nor  no,  offers  neither  resistance  nor  encourage- 
ment. It  is  plastic,  so  far  as  value  is  concerned,  in  the  hands 
of  the  present  moment,  a  means  to  a  present  end,  and  yet  does 
not  complain,  does  not  stand  up  for  its  own  integrity,  though 
such  integrity  it  must  have  to  figure  as  a  present  object  of  knowl- 
edge. 

Not  so  with  the  individual  moments,  in  the  present  social 
continuum  of  experience.  Here  you  have  a  two-sided  dialectic, 
a  yes  and  no  relation.  Misconstrue  the  other  mind  and  you 
fail  of  cooperation,  fail  to  realize  your  purposes.  The  other 
reflective  consciousness  not  only  has  a  meaning,  but  insists 
that  he  means  what  he  means,  refuses  to  be  the  mere  instru- 
ment to  your  end.  If  you  would  share  his  life  and  realize  your 
own  larger  life,  you  must  revise  your  meaning  of  his  meaning 
so  as  to  approximate  more  closely  to  the  latter.  You  must 
respect  his  own  sense  of  value.  The  more  comprehensive  and 
sympathetic  your  meaning,  the  greater  your  opportunities 
for  life.  Would  you  construe  him  simply  in  your  own  way, 
treat  him  as  a  mere  thing,  then  you  run  up  against  it,  you  are 
slapped  in  the  face,  sometimes  literally ;  whether  you  are  suc- 
cessful or  unsuccessful  in  this  external  dogmatism,  you  forfeit 
your  chances  for  a  larger  life,  you  fail  in  the  struggle.  The 
only  way  you  can  succeed  is  by  an  acknowledgment  of  the 
demands  which  the  other  consciousness  makes  upon  you. 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  291 

Thus  in  the  relationship  of  individuals  within  the  present 
social  continuum,  conscious  agreements  become  necessary. 
Each  individual,  to  realise  his  demands,  must  learn  to  recognize 
the  demands  which  are  made  upon  him  by  other  individuals. 
Only  as  there  is  a  mutual  recognition  of  such  demands,  do  social 
institutions  become  possible.  What  beings  we  are  forced  to 
acknowledge  as  individuals,  and  the  character  of  these  indi- 
viduals for  us  —  this  depends  upon  the  demands  to  which  we 
must  adjust  ourselves,  which  we  must  recognize  in  order  to 
realize  our  purposes;  and  the  adequacy  of  the  realization  of 
our  purposes  will  depend  upon  the  adequacy  of  our  recognition 
of  these  demands.  The  closer  the  approximation  of  our  mean- 
ing to  the  living  purposes  of  other  beings,  the  better  we  shall 
succeed  in  anticipating  their  behavior  and  in  adjusting  ourselves 
to  our  world.  In  the  case  of  the  infra-reflective  nature  pro- 
cesses, no  acknowledgment  of  external  meaning  or  value  is 
necessary.  To  use  these  processes,  therefore,  as  mere  means 
calls  for  no  protest,  and  the  test  of  truth  on  this  level  is  simply 
the  success  of  such  manipulation. 

That  there  are  different  individuals,  however,  can  never  be 
proved  a  priori.  A  priori  the  ego  never  could  get  away  from 
itself.  It  would  simply  have  to  create  its  own  non-ego  out- 
right, and  this  would  be  no  non-ego  at  all.  A  non-ego,  which 
should  exist  simply  as  an  act  of  our  positing,  would  indeed  be 
beautifully  transparent  and  controllable,  but  it  would  be  ab- 
solutely barren  too,  as  far  as  satisfying  any  needs.  It  is  only 
a  posteriori,  through  sympathetic  relations,  or  through  our 
failure  of  adjustment,  that  we  have  come  to  recognize  other 
individuals  at  all.  It  is  through  the  a  posteriori  process  of  ideal 
construction  and  trial  that  we  have  learned  to  meet  the  non- 
ego  in  a  more  adequate  way. 

At  best,  our  knowledge  of  other  individual  minds  is  a  matter 
of  approximation.  We  can  only  partially  hope  to  get  the  real 
significance  of  a  meaning  beyond  our  own.  Communication 
and  conceptual  definition  are  concerned  with  whether  we  aim  at 
the  same  objects  in  each  other's  experience.  It  has  to  do  with 
the  generic  features  of  our  meanings,  not  with  identity  of  fringe 
as  regards  such  objects.  Functional  identity  is  all  that  is 
necessary  for  practical  relations.  The  important  thing  is  not 


292  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

whether  our  meanings  are  the  same,  but  whether  they  terminate 
in  similar  behavior.  If  so,  our  meanings  may  be  taken  as 
equivalent. 

Absolute  sameness  of  meaning,  at  any  one  time,  would  mean 
absolute  sameness  of  mental  contexts  or  mere  identity.  If 
there  are  individual  meanings  at  all,  this  will  be  impossible. 
And  we  must  behave,  at  any  rate,  as  if  there  were  different  in- 
dividuals. The  greater  the  sameness  of  conditions,  however, 
the  greater  the  sameness  of  meaning.  Twins,  it  has  been  shown, 
manifest  a  great  deal  of  likeness  as  regards  tastes  and  prefer- 
ences. But  however  closely  alike  the  organic  conditions  may 
be,  there  is  a  difference  in  subjective  conditions,  difference  in 
emphasis,  difference  in  initiative  and  choices,  difference  in  social 
setting. 

The  greater  the  disparity  in  conditions  and  meaning,  the 
more  difficult  becomes  the  problem  of  agreement  or  common 
understanding  even  in  the  crudest  ways.  How  difficult  it  is 
for  us  to  interpret  the  child  mind  and  to  sympathize  with  its 
aims.  We  treat  it  just  like  a  little  grown  person.  How  little 
sympathy  we  show  with  savage  races  and  how  little,  if  any, 
significance  we  attribute  to  their  lives  as  shown  in  our  treatment 
of  them.  Still  more  problematic  becomes  our  knowledge  in 
regard  to  animal  consciousness.  We  are  apt  either  to  deny  to 
the  higher  animals  any  significant  life,  or  else  to  attribute 
to  them  our  own  consciousness.  In  the  lowest  organisms  and 
in  the  inorganic  realm,  knowledge  becomes  a  mere  demand  for 
external  continuity  and  use,  as  far  as  we  are  concerned. 

Even  in  the  living  present,  then,  and  where  the  conditions 
are  most  favorable,  our  knowledge  is  decidedly  problematic. 
The  value  of  our  knowledge,  even  on  the  highest  level  of  de- 
velopment, must  be  estimated  from  the  point  of  view  of  con- 
venience for  action  and  appreciation,  rather  than  with  reference 
to  exhaustiveness. 

In  the  meantime,  since  reality  is  individual,  and  because  it 
is  individual  is  dynamic,  there  is  an  element  of  non-being  in  our 
knowledge.  Our  ideal  construction  gives  a  value  of  its  own  to 
reality  beyond.  And  as  the  reality  beyond  is  ever  changing, 
the  prospect  of  exhausting  the  surd  and  reducing  the  universe 
to  the  dead  level  of  sameness  is  at  most  a  dream  of  those  phi- 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  293 

losophers,  in  whom  the  passion  for  identity  overmasters  every 
other  passion.  Only  in  a  world  of  abstract  averages  could  such 
a  permanent  instinctive  adjustment,  as  Spencer  dreams  of,  be 
possible,  surely  not  in  a  world  of  unstable  individual  equilibri- 
ums, with  the  possibility  always  of  new  insight  as  well  as  the 
possibility  of  going  wrong.  Each  creative  act,  whether  new 
purpose  or  sin,  changes  the  total  complexion  of  the  universe 
and  involves  a  fresh  readjustment.  In  a  world  like  ours,  there- 
fore, there  will  always  be  coexistent  many  .experience  moments 
with  their  different  perspectives  of  history  and  nature,  each 
with  its  scale  of  values.  Sameness  for  us  is,  at  best,  a  category 
of  conceptual  abstraction,  to  be  used  in  so  far  as  it  may  be 
convenient.  Better  live  in  a  problematic  and  contingent  world, 
however,  with  something  to  do  and  something  to  attain,  than  to 
suffer  from  the  langeweile  and  dull  monotony  of  a  world  where 
nothing  happens. 

The  difficulty  with  the  past,  as  we  have  seen,  is  that  it  makes 
no  living  response.  We  are  dealing  there  with  attitudes  no 
longer  actively  real.  As  to  the  past  attitudes  themselves,  we 
must  rely  on  records,  but  the  records  are  merely  symbolic  of 
past  points  of  view.  The  thought  universe,  within  which 
they  lived,  is  at  most  only  a  partial  world  to  us,  a  stage  in  the 
evolution  of  our  own  experience,  while  to  them  it  was  the  whole 
world.  The  mythological  world,  for  example,  which  was 
reality  itself  to  our  ancestors,  is  a  mere  shadow  world  to  us,  at 
best  preparatory  for  better  things.  It  was  a  belief  world  to 
them,  it  is  mere  fancy  to  us.  We  do  not  get  the  past  attitudes 
or  meanings  as  such,  we  get  them  only  as  transmuted  and 
appropriated  into  the  historic  movements  that  have  succeeded 
them.  That  is  their  significance  for  us.  How  plastic  history 
is,  is  evident  from  the  difference  in  emphasis  and  interpretation 
from  age  to  age.  Each  age  uses  history  for  its  own  ends,  re- 
constructs the  past  for  the  sake  of  its  own  purposes,  and  in 
obedience  to  its  own  needs.  The  more  complex  the  point  of 
view  grows,  the  more  hopeless  is  any  realization  of  the  real 
meaning  of  the  primitive  attitudes. 

Sometimes  there  has  been  an  attempt  to  regard  the  past 
as  resolvable  into  mere  degrees  of  complexity  with  reference 
to  the  present.  This,  as  an  artificial  device,  may,  for  certain 


294  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

purposes,  be  justifiable.  It  is  convenient  sometimes  to  regard 
the  mind  of  the  savage  and  the  baby  as  our  own  mind  sim- 
plified. Such  meaning  as  we  get  out  of  the  universe  must 
naturally,  as  shown  before,  involve  such  a  translation  into 
terms  of  ourselves.  But  the  savage  and  the  child  are  not  mere 
complications  of  content.  They  are  wills,  in  their  own  right, 
with  their  own  unique  value.  Here  lies  the  difficulty  of  un- 
derstanding them.  Were  they  mere  things,  no  such  difficulty 
would  exist.  We  could  read  their  qualities  in  terms  of  other 
qualities,  we  could  take  them  as  mere  instances  of  their  kind. 
If  you  understand  one  piece  of  gold,  you  understand  all  pieces 
of  gold.  When  it  comes  to  wills,  each  will  must  be  understood 
and  appreciated  as  such,  even  though  this  can  be  done  only 
in  terms  of  our  own  experience. 

However  different  may  be  the  practical  relations  of  sympathy 
and  interaction  as  between  the  past  and  the  present,  the  method 
of  knowing  the  past  does  not  differ  from  that  of  understanding 
the  present.  In  either  case,  the  procedure  must  be  pragmatic 
—  the  trying  out  of  our  hypotheses  or  attitudes  in  individual  and 
social  experience.  In  either  case,  the  difficulty  lies  in  the  unique- 
ness of  the  volitional  context.  The  fact  that  the  two  wills 
exist  ages  apart  does  not  itself  alter  the  problem.  I  can  more 
easily  understand  Plato  and  Aristotle  than  the  children  that 
play  in  the  yard.  In  any  case,  we  must  draw  upon  our  own 
experience ;  and  in  the  case  of  the  child,  we  must  draw  upon  our 
memory  so  far  as  we  can ;  we  must  strive  to  make  real  the  past 
will  of  our  own  early  life. 

History  must  be  regarded,  then,  as  our  ideal  construction  on 
the  basis  of  past  contexts  of  will  as  they  survive  in  records.  Its 
justification  is  a  practical  one.  In  appropriating  the  institu- 
tional or  accumulated  life  of  the  race,  we  come  to  consciousness 
of  ourselves,  we  come  to  understand  our  world,  and  to  anticipate 
better  its  behavior,  though  the  music  and  the  discord  of  the 
past  have  been  merged  into  the  movement  of  the  present. 
History,  therefore,  has  a  practical  aim.  We  can  act  more  in- 
telligently in  the  present  by  taking  account  of  the  contexts  of 
the  past.  The  past  dimension  is  convenient  for  spreading 
out  certain  present  strata  and  observing  their  tendency  for  us. 
In  order  to  have  history  at  all,  human,  biological,  or  geological, 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  295 

we  must  abstract  and  simplify  as  best  we  can  within  our  com- 
plex present ;  we  must  try  to  understand  the  motives  of  past 
human  history  in  the  light  of  our  own  present  tendencies; 
we  must  breathe  into  the  symbolic  structures  of  the  dead  past 
such  soul  as  seems  to  be  called  for  by  their  greater  simplicity 
or  complexity.  But  we  must  not  be  deceived  into  mistaking 
our  constructions  for  reality.  These  past  symbolic  structures, 
once  at  any  rate,  had  a  soul  of  their  own.  In  the  case  of  our 
own  childhood  points  of  view,  moreover,  while  they  are  no 
longer  real  beliefs,  we  at  least  own  them  as  once  ours,  and  can 
contrast  them  with  our  present  point  of  view  as  fading  memory 
structures. 

While  we  cannot  make  the  contents  of  the  past,  the  value 
of  the  past  varies  with  the  purposes  of  the  living  present.  Hence 
the  history  of  the  past  is  never  closed.  For  history,  whether 
political  or  philosophical  or  scientific,  is  a  process  of  evaluation, 
and  the  value  of  the  past  must  ever  vary  with  the  changing 
purposes  of  humanity.  What  seem  real  values  in  one  period 
of  history,  may  seem  illusions  in  another  period.  The  intoxi- 
cation of  military  pageant  seems  as  barbarous  to  a  scientific 
and  industrial  epoch  as  does  the  display  of  human  scalps. 
Thus,  entirely  apart  from  the  discovery  of  new  facts,  we  see  how 
the  perspective  of  history  assumes  ever  new  values.  It  takes 
its  coloring,  chameleon  like,  from  the  context  in  which  it  is  seen. 
The  original  values  are  difficult  to  reproduce  at  best  as  they 
are  colored  for  us  by  the  present  background. 

It  is  not  always  that  the  past  values  appear  to  us  as  illusions. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  they  seem  prophetic  of  the  present.  The 
past  attitudes  furnish  the  leading,  so  it  seems,  which  terminates 
in  the  present.  Here,  too,  we  must  be  on  our  guard  in  reading 
our  values  into  the  past  attitudes.  Each  age  and  sect  claims 
the  true  Christianity,  each  national  party  claims  to  continue  the 
true  policies  of  Washington  and  Lincoln.  While  the  real 
leading  cannot  here  be  over-estimated,  we  must  none  the  less 
realize  that  we  are  looking  at  the  past  through  the  eyes  of  our 
age,  and  only  in  the  long  run,  if  at  all,  can  the  fairness  of  our 
interpretation  be  wholly  proved.  In  the  meantime,  we  must 
be  modest  and  open-minded. 

By  virtue  of  individual  creativeness,  and  the  complexity  of 


296  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

historic  currents,  with  their  unequal  pace  of  development,  the 
past  values  may  appear  not  only  as  prophecies  of  the  present ; 
they  may  appear  as  standards  of  the  present.  Thus  in  art  and 
philosophy  we  still  look  back  to  the  Greeks  as  masters ;  and  in 
ethics  we  find  our  ideal  outlined  by  the  old  prophets  and 
the  Master  of  "the  Sermon  on  the  Mount."  But  whether  we 
look  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  level  of  appreciation,  or  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher,  we  are  equally  limited  by  the  atmosphere  of 
value  which  we  carry  with  us. 

In  looking  back  at  the  historic  series,  as  we  have  spread  it 
out,  it  seems  indeed  to  bear  the  stamp  of  necessity.  But  this 
necessity  is  merely  subjective  and  a  posteriori,  and  should  not 
be  read  into  the  historic  process.  It  means  simply  that  we  could 
not  now  take  account  of  the  facts  in  a  different  order,  or  with 
a  different  meaning.  If  we  look  into  the  making  of  history, 
we  must  not  forget,  however  massive  the  accumulation  of 
experience  in  the  way  of  customs,  language,  and  institutions 
may  seem,  that  individuals  built  history,  and  that  the  social 
products  are  the  result  of  their  accumulated  purposes  and 
failures.  In  the  making,  as  well  as  now  in  the  interpretation, 
the  facts  were  plastic.  While  the  facts  now  fit  in,  and  seem  the 
natural  outgrowth  of  their  predecessors,  other  facts,  had  they 
happened,  would  have  fitted  in  equally  well  by  transforming 
their  predecessors  into  terms  of  themselves.  The  facts  them- 
selves are  gifts  therefore,  and  it  is  for  us  to  fit  them  together 
as  best  may  suit  our  purposes  for  the  time  being.  The  only 
place  where  reality  is  determined  or  stereotyped,  is  in  a  stereo- 
typed brain,  in  a  mind  that  has  substituted  verbal  counters 
for  real  meanings. 

Knowledge  of  the  Future  —  The  A  Priori  and  Probable 

The  future  has  no  content  of  its  own,  such  as  the  context 
of  the  past.  What  meaning  it  now  has  is  present  meaning. 
The  past  has  a  chronology  which  is  binding  upon  us.  We 
must  respect  the  records  of  the  past  with  their  meaning.  The 
future  knows  no  records,  it  respects  no  data.  The  future  as 
such,  therefore,  is  pure  ideal  construction.  While  the  social- 
ized past  has  one  dimension,  and  the  present  has  three  dimen- 
sions, —  the  future  has  no  dimension  of  its  own  at  all  so  far  as 


TIME   AND    THE   PROBLEMATIC  297 

actual  content  relations  are  concerned.  It  is  the  projection 
of  the  present  with  its  observed  sequences,  qualities  and  re- 
lations into  the  non-being  or  emptiness  of  the  future. 

That  does  not  mean,  however,  that  we  can  make  up  the 
future  out  of  the  whole  cloth  of  past  and  present.  The  future 
is  bound  up  with  the  creative  aspect  of  reality,  particularly 
with  the  creative  contexts  of  life  and  will.  It  is  in  part  at  least, 
and  so  far  as  concerns  its  concrete  individuality,  indeterminate. 
This  can  be  best  illustrated  in  our  own  development.  The 
self  grows,  or  at  any  rate  changes,  with  the  reaction.  In  its 
animal  innocence  of  thought,  it  cannot  predict  the  insight  into 
good  and  evil  which  may  come  by  eating  of  the  tree  of  knowl- 
edge. While  we  must  utilize  past  experience  in  meeting  the 
prospective  situation,  the  alternatives  which  we  thus  abstract 
from  the  situation  are  only  instruments  in  the  service  of  the 
concrete  process  which  singles  them  out.  Prediction  concerns 
the  abstract  aspects  of  the  facts  at  best.  If  reality  did  not 
consist  of  a  series  of  unique  dynamic  situations,  if  we  could 
predict  a  priori  from  the  abstract  elements  or  qualities  precisely 
what  the  compound  would  be,  if  in  short  nothing  really  hap- 
pened, we  should  have  no  problem  of  the  future. 

It  is  this  creative  character  of  our  world  which  compels  us 
to  be  empiricists,  so  far  at  any  rate  as  the  concrete  facts  are 
concerned.  We  must  qualify  all  our  formulae  by  saying  that 
in  so  far  as  the  relevant  conditions  are  the  same,  we  may  expect 
the  same  results.  But  it  is  only  in  the  simpler  physical  pro- 
cesses at  most  that  we  can  for  practical  purposes  control  the 
conditions.  When  we  come  to  human  volitions,  the  conditions 
are  being  complicated  by  each  act.  It  is  only  in  the  abstract 
and  on  the  average  that  we  can  have  mathematical  precision. 
Aristotle  already  pointed  out  the  difficulty  in  making  particular 
judgments  in  regard  to  the  future  :  "It  is  indeed  necessary  that 
that  which  is  should  be  when  it  is,  and  that  which  is  not  should 
not  be  when  it  is  not,  yet  it  is  not  necessary  that  everything  which 
is  should  transpire,  nor  that  everything  which  is  not  should  not 
transpire ;  for  it  is  not  the  same  to  say  that  everything  neces- 
sarily is  when  it  is  and  to  assert  in  general  that  everything  is 
necessarily."  1  To  make  a  long  story  short,  all  necessity  rests 

1  "De  Interpret,,"  19a,  23ff.  (translation  by  W.  A.  Heidel). 


298  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

upon  a  certain  constitution  of  the  selected  facts,  and  the  neces- 
sity, therefore,  is  only  guaranteed,  in  so  far  as  the  special  con- 
stitution is  guaranteed.  Such  guaranty  in  our  world  can  only 
be  pragmatic,  i.e.  for  practical  purposes  certain  processes  can 
be  taken  as  repeating  themselves.  We  can,  for  the  particular 
purpose,  ignore  the  differences.  We  can  ignore  the  fact  that 
our  friend  has  grown  gray,  so  long  as  his  loyalty  remains.  How 
often,  however,  we  bank  upon  conditions  being  the  same  when 
they  are  not  the  same.  You  change  or  the  friend  changes  and 
sympathy  and  fealty  become  impossible.  Social  conditions 
alter  and  the  best  old  laws  become  impractical.  In  our  plastic 
human  world,  at  any  rate,  we  must  reckon  with  the  uncertainty 
of  the  future.  And  of  late  we  have  come  to  look  upon  all  our 
formulae  as  thus  pragmatic  and  limited  to  the  abstract  and 
observable  aspects  of  the  case. 

The  only  scientific  basis  for  the  future  is  our  belief  in  the 
uniformity  of  nature,  our  faith  that  the  present  conditions  are 
in  a  measure  legislative  for  those  to  come.  The  future  which 
science  deals  with  is  not  the  creative,  individual  future,  but  the 
present  constitution  of  things  extended  into  the  unknown  di- 
mension of  that  which  is  not  yet.  The  future,  therefore,  based 
as  it  is  upon  characteristics  which  have  been  abstracted  from 
the  individual  character  of  reality,  must  always  be  hypothetical. 
Other  things  being  equal,  if  our  concepts  hold,  if  the  observed 
uniformities  are  real,  such  and  such  things  will  happen. 

The  indeterminist  and  the  determinist  have  committed  the 
same  fallacy,  so  far  as  making  one  moment  legislative  for  an- 
other. Each  resolves  the  stream  of  experience  into  abstract 
motives  and  makes  these  play  upon  each  other.  The  deter- 
minist, having  abstracted  certain  characteristics  on  the  basis 
of  the  past,  insists  that  these  must  hold  for  the  future.  The 
indeterminist,  too,  places  his  confidence  upon  certain  abstract 
considerations,  which  he  emphasizes  within  the  present,  and 
insists  that  an  act  in  the  past  might  have  been  otherwise.  He, 
too,  neglects  the  time  element.  But  if  we  use  the  consciousness 
of  regret  as  the  basis  for  the  judgment  that  we  might  have  acted 
otherwise,  we  must  remember  that  the  act  itself  has  brought 
new  insight  and  that  the  self,  therefore,  which  judges  the  past 
is  not  wholly  identical  with  the  self  which  acted  in  the  past. 


TIME   AND   THE    PROBLEMATIC  299 

What  is  practically  important  is  that,  with  the  experience  gained, 
we  can  now  do  otherwise.  If  again  we  insist  with  the  deter- 
minist  that  the  act  must  have  happened  as  it  did,  because  in 
retrospect  we  must  read  it  as  consistent  with  such  a  past,  we 
must  remember  that  had  the  action  happened  otherwise,  it 
would  have  been  equally  consistent  with  the  past,  since  we 
are  judging  character  by  outcome.  In  each  case,  our  concepts 
are  the  abstract  leadings  which  enable  us  to  a  certain  extent 
to  control  our  conduct  on  the  basis  of  our  insight.  Were  there 
no  leadings,  social  plans  would  be  impossible.  Were  there 
no  change,  no  future,  we  should  have  no  plans. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  prediction  in  any  real  sense.  The 
pre  should  at  any  rate  be  left  out.  Science,  in  its  ideal  con- 
struction, abstracts  from  the  time  aspect  and  emphasizes  only 
the  structural  aspect  of  reality.  In  treating  of  the  physical 
processes,  stereotyped  as  they  are,  we  do  seem  to  have  a  case  of 
mere  repetition.  But  it  would  be  mere  dogmatism  to  suppose  that 
even  here  we  have  a  real  repetition.  It  may  be  simply  repeti- 
tion for  us,  with  our  gross  system  of  averages.  Scientific  knowl- 
edge is  only  approximate,  a  convenience  for  our  adjustment. 

If  we  take  account  of  our  scientific  attitudes,  they  surely 
are  anything  but  stable.  The  so  called  laws  and  axioms  of 
science  are  being  retranslated  all  the  while.  The  only  identity 
here  is  the  identity  of  mere  symbols,  not  of  meaning  surely. 
The  symbols,  2  +  2  =  4,  may  be  the  same,  but  our  whole  con- 
ception of  number  has  been  revolutionized  within  a  generation. 
The  axioms  of  geometry,  which  seemed  so  absolute  even  to  the 
British  empiricists,  have  been  sadly  torn  to  pieces  within  recent 
times,  and  have  received  a  new  meaning  altogether.  The 
symbolic  equations  are  the  only  thing  that  has  been  stable 
about  the  law  of  gravitation,  and  even  these  have  been  chal- 
lenged of  late  as  mere  approximations.  The  conception  of  the 
law  itself  is  in  the  crucible  of  criticism.  The  law  of  conser- 
vation of  energy  is  no  longer  dogmatically  asserted  even  by 
physicists.  Lagrange  grants  that  energy  may  disappear,  and 
Maxwell  that  it  may  be  increased  through  a  sorting  process. 
It  is,  however,  an  important  working  basis.  In  the  light  of 
history,  therefore,  it  would  be  mere  idiocy  to  suppose  that  our 
conceptual  attitudes  toward  nature  are  stable. 


300  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

When  we  consider  knowledge  which  deals  with  the  plastic 
world  of  meaning,  here,  at  any  rate,  mere  a  priori  dogmatism 
soon  proves  its  own  absurdity.  The  man  who  makes  the 
social  and  individual  future  out  of  the  whole  cloth  of  the  present ; 
who  regards  his  private  attitudes  as  legislative  for  the  process 
of  history,  is  bound  to  bitter  disappointment,  or  at  least  to  be 
the  laughing-stock  of  the  future.  The  man  who  established 
the  Dudlean  lectureship  at  Harvard,  in  order  that  future  ages 
might  thunder  forth  their  condemnation  against  "the  damnable 
heresies  of  the  Catholic  church/'  would  probably  be  as  chagrined 
at  the  carrying  out  of  the  provisions  of  his  will,  as  he  is  amusing 
to  us.  A  man  by  the  name  of  Paine  who  gave  five  thousand 
dollars,  something  over  a  hundred  years  ago,  to  establish  a 
trade  school  in  Boston  a  hundred  years  in  the  future,  did  not 
realize  that  the  apprentice  system  would  vanish  out  of  our  in- 
stitutions before  then,  and  that  the  courts  of  Massachusetts 
would  have  difficulty  in  translating  his  will  into  present  pur- 
poses. Pessimistic  theologians  have  mourned  over  the  rejec- 
tion of  their  religious  concepts,  their  creeds  of  hell-fire,  as  Jonah 
mourned  over  his  gourd,  not  realizing  that  it  is  more  important 
that  the  universe  should  develop  new  meanings,  than  that  it 
should  be  held  in  the  death  grip  of  their  past  concepts.  The 
political  reactionary  is  fearful  of  departing  from  the  old  order 
of  things  with  its  manipulation  by  the  few,  and  smells  danger 
in  the  arousal  of  a  people's  conscience  and  sense  of  fair  play. 
In  the  language  of  F.  P.. Dunne,  as  regards  a  recent  political 
convention  :  " '  The  throuble  looks  to  be  over  makin'  th'  timpry 
organization  permynint,'  said  Mr.  Hennessy.  '  That's  all  th' 
throuble  in  th'  wu-rr-uld,'  said  Mr.  Dooley.  'Me  frind  wud 
like  to  make  th'  timpry  organization  iv  th'  wu-r-uld  permynint. 
He  ought  to.  He's  timpry  chairman,  chosen  by  th'  comity.' ' 

There  is  indeed  a  certain  continuity  within  the  process. 
In  the  midst  of  our  human  flux,  certain  themes  seem  to  be  per- 
manent ;  and  in  terms  of  them,  we  can  judge  the  changing  en- 
deavors of  the  race.  In  the  midst  of  the  organic  fluctuations 
and  transmutations,  certain  types  or  directions  seem  to  remain  ; 
in  the  midst  of  the  indefinite  variations  of  inorganic  compounds 
certain  qualities  or  elements  can  be  traced  as  practically  con- 
stant. Our  perspective  of  the  past,  therefore,  enables  us  to 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  301 

make  certain  disjunctions  of  probabilities  as  regards  the  future. 
At  any  rate,  what  happens  in  the  future  will  not  happen  without 
relation  to  the  present.  The  future  will  be  better  somehow 
for  our  seriousness,  for  our  attempts  at  improvement,  even 
though  the  particular  gifts  which  the  future  may  bring  must 
be  waited  for.  With  our  larger  insight  into  the  laws  of  process, 
we  can  at  any  rate  improve  the  present,  and  so  be  ready  for  the 
future.  The  quality  of  the  gifts  which  the  future  brings  at  each 
moment  are  conditioned  upon  the  set  of  the  will  which  conditions 
the  future. 

While  we  cannot  anticipate  that  which  is  not  created,  while 
we  cannot  read  off  a  meaning  which  can  only  come  into  being 
by  a  transformation  of  our  present  meaning,  while  it  is  always 
true  that  the  present  truth  must  die  in  order  that  the  higher  truth 
may  come,  still  the  present  makes  certain  demands  upon  it- 
self, which  the  present  does  not  satisfy.  It  may  be  that  the 
demands  are  wrong,  it  may  be  that  experience  will  embody  the 
demands  in  a  new  and  larger  meaning,  but  in  either  case,  the 
present  provides  problems  for  the  future,  and  furnishes  a  cer- 
tain direction  to  the  future. 

To  recognize  that  the  present  makes  demands  upon  itself 
which  it  cannot  satisfy,  is  a  very  different  thing,  however,  from 
holding  that  we  now  anticipate  the  fulfilment  of  these  demands, 
and  compare  our  present  meaning  to  a  larger  meaning.  If  so, 
knowledge  would  be  complete  now  and  eternally.  We  may  re- 
alize that  our  hypotheses  are  inconsistent,  and  yet  be  limited 
to  them.  We  do,  indeed,  believe  that,  somehow,  knowledge 
will  not  stop  here,  that  by  creating  new  hypotheses  and  by  fresh 
investigations  there  shall  be  a  survival  of  the  fittest  which  will 
mean  a  greater  approximation  to  truth.  But  if  we  could 
anticipate  that  truth  now,  we  would  be  foolish  not  to  stop  work- 
ing. Whether  right  or  wrong,  we  must  make  violence  on  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  by  striving  to  coerce  reality  to  fulfil  our 
demands  or  needs.  Whether  we  succeed  or  fail,  we  shall  gain 
experience,  in  the  light  of  which  our  demands  shall  have  new 
meaning.  What  is  needed  is  an  open  mind  to  meet  the  future 
without  bias  or  prejudice,  and  to  act  on  the  light  as  God  gives 
us  to  see  the  light  every  moment  of  experience. 

Nor  must  we  be  over  consistent.     It  may  be  necessary  even 


302  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

in  science,  though  its  aim  is  a  consistent  system  of  truth,  to  hold 
to  contradictory  hypotheses  for  the  time  being,  when  such 
hypotheses  are  useful  in  dealing  with  the  facts.  It  may  be 
that  the  contradiction  is  involved  in  the  nature  of  things.  If 
so,  we  shall  have  system  in  so  far  as  it  is  possible,  and  we  shall 
be  better  able  to  anticipate  the  behavior  of  things.  It  may  be, 
and  we  have  a  deep-rooted  faith  that  this  is  so,  that  the  contra- 
diction is  due  to  our  own  chaotic  purposes.  If  so,  such  a  measure 
of  meaning  as  we  can  reach  will  be  a  necessary  step  for  further 
progress.  Passive  indifference  can  only  mean  failure  in  any  case. 

It  is  a  safe  rule  to  stick  to  all  those  demands  which  seem 
essential  for  the  largest  life,  whether  we  at  present  can  reconcile 
them  or  not.  For  purposes  of  knowing  it  may  be  important  to 
emphasize  the  unity  and  sameness  and  wholeness  of  things. 
For  purposes  of  action,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  important 
to  take  account  of  the  diversity  and  individuality,  the  changing 
and  incomplete  character  of  things.  For  ethics,  for  example,  the 
universe  must  be  regarded  as  plastic,  as  amenable  to  human 
purposes,  and  to  a  certain  extent  indeterminate  in  character, 
if  the  individual  life  is  to  count  for  something.  While  what 
seems  essential  now,  moreover,  may  not  seem  so  in  later  stages 
of  development,  and  while  our  beliefs  are  bound  to  have  new 
meaning  as  we  go  on,  yet  our  beliefs  are  good  in  so  far  as  they 
now  help  us  to  live  the  richest  possible  life.  The  best  religion 
and  the  best  philosophy,  for  us  at  any  rate,  is  that  which  grows 
out  of  our  present  demands,  and  meets  our  present  needs.  In 
so  far  as  they  do  so  comprehensively  and  truly,  we  may  be  sure 
that  they  will  be  taken  up  into  a  richer  future. 

It  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  that  knowledge  does  not  exist  for 
its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  action  and  appreciation. 
Philosophy  may  have  a  creative  function,  such  as  poetry  and 
art  have.  If,  by  creating  a  certain  kind  of  belief  world,  we  can 
attain  to  a  larger  life  than  we  otherwise  could,  why  is  not  the 
creation  of  such  a  belief  world  a  legitimate  thing,  even  though 
it  cannot  be  measured  in  terms  of  the  prosaic  standards  of 
science?  In  the  spiritual  reality  of  individual  and  social  life, 
creative  faith  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  important 
factors.  Without  this,  events  do  indeed  happen  differently. 
With  it,  the  broken  sword  can  still  win  a  glorious  victory. 


TIME   AND   THE   PROBLEMATIC  303 

Our  finite  attitudes  towards  the  universe  are,  at  best,  com- 
promises. Sometimes,  they  are  contradictory,  and  only  the 
more  useful  for  it.  When  the  Presbyterians  added  to  their 
confession  of  preordination  a  clause  on  individual  freedom  and 
responsibility,  they  laid  themselves  open  to  the  charge  of  in- 
consistency ;  but  perhaps  it  was  the  best  they  could  do ;  and  at 
any  rate,  they  avowed  openly  what  other  religious  creeds  and  phi- 
losophies imply.  While  consistency  is  important,  our  universe 
is  too  big  for  consistency,  and  we  often  have  to  hold  to  postu- 
lates and  hypotheses  that  conflict,  because  we  cannot  afford 
to  do  without  them.  They  serve  our  needs.  Perhaps  the 
thinking  and  research  of  ages  may  resolve  them  into  a  more 
comprehensive  view.  In  the  meantime,  it  behooves  us  to  be 
modest;  to  be  open  minded;  to  allow  fair  play  of  opinions; 
and,  while  emphasizing  what  needs  to  be  emphasized  as  we  see 
it,  to  regard  our  results  at  best  as  decidedly  provisional,  —  step- 
ping stones,  let  us  hope,  to  better  things. 

"  It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down, 
It  may  be  we  shall  reach  the  Happy  Isles, 
But  something  ere  the  end,  some  work  of  noble  note  may  yet  be  done."  * 

1  Huxley-Tennyson. 


PART  V 
FORM  AND  REALITY 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  IDENTITY  OF  THE  IDEALS 

THE  thesis  of  this  chapter  is  that  the  ideals  of  life,  of  truth 
and  beauty  and  virtue,  are  identical  as  regards  form  or  the 
demands  which  they  set  to  the  concrete  will.  The  difference 
in  our  ideal  activities  lies,  not  in  their  form,  but  in  the  specific 
end  in  which  human  nature  strives  to  embody  the  ideals,  — 
the  discovery  of  truth  with  its  characteristic  satisfaction,  the 
creation  and  joy  of  beauty,  and  the  making  of  a  social  char- 
acter with  its  concomitant  happiness.  In  short,  the  content, 
not  the  form,  differentiates  the  ideals. 

In  dealing  with  ideals,  as  in  dealing  with  other  aspects  of 
experience,  we  must  remember  that  philosophy  must  limit 
itself  to  the  overlapping  problems.  Philosophy  cannot  treat 
in  detail  all  the  various  types  of  concrete  social  ideals.  It  must 
content  itself  by  taking  account  of  the  large  genera  under  which 
these  ideals  group  themselves  according  as  they  have  to  do  with 
thought,  appreciation  or  volitional  conduct. 


There  have  been  various  efforts  in  the  past  both  towards  the 
unification  and  the  differentiation  of  the  ideals.  But  both 
types  of  effort  have  been  largely  futile  from  the  failure  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  form  and  the  content  of  ideal  activity, 
between  the  ideal  demands  and  their  concrete  embodiments. 
A  word  first  about  the  attempts  at  identification.  The  kin- 
ship of  ideals  was  felt  by  the  ancient  Hebrew  psalmist  in  the 
striking  invitation:  "Oh,  worship  the  Lord  in  the  beauty  of 
holiness. "  But  we  do  not  look  for  abstract  analysis  in  this 
quarter.  We  are  reminded  of  a  similar  poetic  identification 
by  Voltaire:  "Only  truth  is  beautiful,  only  virtue  is  lovable." 
We  naturally  look  to  the  philosophers  for  systematic  statement. 
Here,  too,  however,  the  identification  will  be  found  to  be 
intuitional  and  fragmentary. 

307 


308  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

Plato  shares  with  his  Greek  background  the  feeling  that  the 
good  and  true  and  beautiful  are  somehow  one.  In  the  "  Protag- 
oras "  he  strives  to  identify  the  virtues  as  knowledge,  for  it  is 
knowledge  that  must  furnish  the  measure  in  the  evaluation  of 
goods ;  and  insight  when  present  cannot  fail  to  control  conduct. 
Hence  the  problem  of  virtue  becomes  the  problem  of  education. 
By  implication  all  the  values  of  life  are  here  reduced  to  truth. 
In  the  "  Symposium,"  beauty,  with  its  intoxicating  contempla- 
tion, becomes  the  supreme  ideal .  In  the ' '  Philebus ' '  he  identifies 
beauty  and  virtue  in  terms  of  their  common  denominator: 
"  Measure  and  symmetry  are  beauty  and  virtue  the  world  over." 
In  the  "Philebus"  and  the  " Republic"  he  makes  the  good  the 
final  genus,  including  under  it  truth,  virtue,  and  beauty.  But 
these  are  merely  brilliant  intuitions, — looking  now  to  the  form, 
now  to  the  content  of  the  ideals  for  unity. 

In  modern  times  Shaftesbury  has  summarized  for  us  the 
Greek  point  of  view  as  regards  this  essential  kinship  of  the 
ideals.  "What  is  beautiful  is  harmonious  and  proportionable; 
what  is  harmonious  and  proportionable  is  true ;  and  what  is  at 
once  both  beautiful  and  true  is  of  consequence  agreeable  and 
good."  But  this  statement  too  is  impressionistic.  It  fails  to 
divorce  form  and  content;  and  as  regards  the  latter  fails  to 
furnish  the  differentia.  It  amounts  to  only  a  feeling  for  the 
kinship  of  the  ideals.  It  does  not  unravel  the  problem.  The 
same  Greek  feeling  is  to  be  found  in  the  poet  Schiller,  as  regards 
the  kinship  of  beauty  and  virtue,  where,  on  the  one  hand, 
beauty  refines  us  into  virtue  and,  on  the  other,  the  virtuous  life 
must  be  looked  upon  in  its  perfect  stage  as  the  beautiful  soul. 
Lotze,  in  like  manner,  feels  the  kinship  of  truth  and  beauty. 
For  him  the  ultimate  self -evidence  of  the  unity  of  truth  "must 
no  longer  be  called  logical  but  aesthetic  and  accordingly  will  find 
the  touchstone  of  its  validity  no  longer  in  the  unthinkableness, 
but  in  the  plain  absurdity  of  its  contrary."  And  again  :  "The 
coherence  of  the  many  single  elements  of  truth  which  enables 
them  to  be  ranged  under  a  simple  fundamental  idea  may  rest 
upon  aesthetic  propriety."  1  Here  too  the  relation  is  a  matter  of 
intuition,  not  of  clearness  and  distinctness. 

My  revered  teacher,  the  late  C.  C.  Everett,  came  back  to  the 

1  Lotze,  "Logic"  (Eng.  Trans.),  Vol.  II,  pp.  329-330. 


THE   IDENTITY   OF   THE   IDEALS  309 

problem  of  identification  again  and  again.  Thus  he  tells  us : 
''Goodness  and  beauty  are  really  manifestations  of  truth."  l 
Again  :  "The  three  ideas  of  the  reason  are  simply  manifestations 
of  one  and  the  same  principle.  The  first  affirms  that  which  is, 
the  second  that  which  ought  to  be,  while  in  the  third  we  find 
that  which  is  as  it  ought  to  be,  the  fulfilled  perfection."  2  To 
this  relation  to  the  will  I  shall  come  back  later,  but  what  made 
Everett  feel  the  kinship  was  the  implication  of  unity  in  each 
ideal. 

Lately,  there  has  been  an  attempt  to  identify  the  types  of  value 
from  the  biological  point  of  view,  sometimes  in  terms  of  adjust- 
ment and  sometimes  in  terms  of  satisfaction.  But  apart  from 
the  adequacy  of  the  method,  this  is  after  all  only  the  statement 
of  the  genus.  It  still  remains  to  state  the  differentia  in  each 
case,  whether  of  adjustments  or  satisfactions.  Of  course  this 
must  be  done  in  terms  of  concrete  values.  At  any  rate  the 
fancied  unification  is  only  vagueness. 

II 

If  the  efforts  at  unification  of  ideals  have  been  intuitional  and 
confused,  so  have  the  efforts  at  differentiation.  Thus  it  has 
been  suggested  that  the  aesthetic  attitude  differs  from  the  scien- 
tific and  moral  in  that  the  aesthetic  is  isolated  and  sufficient  unto 
itself,  while  the  other  attitudes  imply  larger  connections.  But 
in  no  case  can  we  isolate  so  as  to  cut  off  completely  from  the 
background  of  experience.  This  is  the  more  of  life,  which  our 
ideal  abstraction  is  intended  to  make  significant.  In  each  case 
there  must  be  the  fringe,  the  suggestive  value.  Art  is  as 
meaningless  as  science,  where  the  individual  fails  to  bring  the 
necessary  equipment  of  experience.  The  object  in  any  case 
is  a  focus  of  suggestion,  an  effort,  not  merely  to  suppress,  but  to 
control  association  in  a  definite  direction.  The  suggestions, 
however,  must  grow  out  from  the  expressed  relations,  —  the 
object,  not  from  the  mere  label.  They  must  be  continuous 
with  the  object  and  germane  to  it,  —  intrinsic  and  not  merely 
extrinsic,  internal  and  not  merely  external  to  the  theme.  The 
savage  and  the  child  do  not  discover  the  beauty  in  the  Angelus 

1 "  The  Psychological  Elements  of  Religious  Faith,"  p.  148. 
*Ibid.,  200. 


310  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

because  they  lack  the  background  of  experience  to  suggest  its 
internal  meaning. 

Since  our  ideal  strivings  are  meanings,  they  must  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  select  and  abstract  such  aspects  as  will  make  the  rest 
significant.  In  a  measure  all  idealization  is  isolation,  emphasis. 
But  they  must  suggest,  too,  the  larger  setting  and  unity.  The 
whole  is  never  the  merely  present  even  in  art.  We  might  define 
art,  with  more  truth,  as  companionship  with  the  universe,  to 
which  the  selected  aspect  furnishes  the  friendly  introduction. 
Not  merely  what  is  presented,  but  rather  what  we  bring  in  the 
way  of  experience  and  demands,  is  what  constitutes  art:stic 
creation  and  appreciation.  The  selected  object  is  the  focus,  the 
nuclear  constellation  of  content,  which  suggests  the  richness 
of  concrete  experience.  All  idealization  is  abstraction,  but 
abstraction  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  making  the 
concrete  significant. 

Since  in  each  field  the  object  is  constituted  by  the  selective 
interest,  we  cannot  make  this  the  differentia.  In  the  case  of 
each  type  of  ideal  realization,  we  must  know  the  selective  aim 
for  the  activity  to  have  meaning.  I  saw  little  of  merit  in  a 
painting  before  which  I  stood  recently,  until  I  read  the  subject, 
"  Fleeting  Shadows."  And  then  it  was  marvelous.  The  artist 
had  selected  this  aspect,  the  rest  was  foil.  Lamb  refused  to 
admit  that  2x2  =  4  until  he  knew  what  use  was  to  be  made  of 
it.  Whether  true  or  not  depends  upon  the  selective  aim.  Of 
abstract  quantities  it  is  true,  but  not  of  human  personalities. 
Whether  a  deed  is  morally  significant  or  not  depends  upon  the 
aim.  If  done  from  impulse,  it  is  a  mere  natural  event  like  the 
falling  stone.  If  done  from  motive,  it  indicates  a  good  or  mean 
character.  Thus  all  ideals  tend  in  part  to  abstract,  isolate, 
frame.  But  they  also  have  their  larger  individual  and  cosmic 
setting. 

It  has  been  customary  to  credit  moral  activity  with  the  aim 
of  improvement  as  contrasted  with  other  types  of  ideal  activity. 
But  it  must  be  clear  now  that,  in  neither  case,  do  we  take  expe- 
rience as  we  find  it.  In  each  case  must  the  immediate  be  recon- 
structed in  conformity  with  our  ideal  demands.  In  each  case 
must  there  be  selection,  emphasis,  suppression  of  motley  details 
in  order  to  make  experience  significant.  In  neither  case  do  we 


THE    IDENTITY   OF   THE    IDEALS  311 

make  the  facts  or  data.  We  create  by  selection ;  we  bring  out 
the  promising  relations;  we  experiment  to  express  in  terms  of 
the  presented  material  what  we  deeply  and  truly  mean  as 
idealizing  selves. 

Another  attempt  at  differentiation  of  ideals  is  based  upon 
their  relation  to  attention.  The  aesthetic  ideal,  for  example, 
is  held  to  be  characterized  by  spontaneous  attention,  uncon- 
scious creativeness,  the  immediate  absorption  of  the  will, 
while  the  scientific  and  ethical  ideals,  especially  the  latter,  are 
held  to  involve  active  and  strenuous  attention.  Attention, 
however,  does  not  furnish  conclusive  differentia.  The  moral 
life  cannot  be  distinguished  from  the  aesthetic  by  the  sense  of 
effort  involved  in  the  obedience  to  the  moral  law.  We  must  be 
careful  not  to  confuse  points  of  view,  —  the  point  of  view  of  the 
creative  activity  and  that  of  the  spectator  of  the  result.  The 
latter  does  not  necessarily  require  effort  in  any  case.  As  regards 
the  former  it  may  require  effort  in  any  ideal  activity.  Working 
by  genius  does  not  mean  working  without  effort,  even  though 
genius  is  more  than  dint  of  hard  work.  Artists  do  not 
necessarily  dash  off  the  results  which  we  sometimes  find  it  so 
easy  to  appreciate.  Spontaneous  genius  does  not  exist  outside 
the  story  books.  Few  realize  the  painstaking  toil  that  has 
entered  into  what  seems  to  us  so  spontaneous  and  satisfying. 
The  original  of  many  a  stylist  seems  fairly  lost  in  the  corrections 
which  overlay  it.  The  artist  may  have  spoiled  many  pictures, 
with  heartrending  consciousness  lest  he  should  miss  the  gleam, 
before  he  gave  us  this  masterly  result.  Nor  is  it  an  unmistakable 
sign  of  art  that  we  should  enjoy  it  immediately,  —  as  it  were, 
love  it  at  first  sight.  The  first  impression  in  the  world  of  art 
is  not,  any  more  than  in  the  world  of  truth,  necessarily  most 
worth  while.  In  either  case,  the  immediate  hazy  intuition 
must  be  made  clear  and  distinct  by  analysis  of  the  idea  of  the 
author  in  its  various  moments.  This  eventually  brings  back 
the  sense  of  unity  greatly  enhanced. 

In  the  case  of  the  moral  life,  on  the  other  hand,  active  atten- 
tion has  been  emphasized.  But  temptation  and  effort  may 
indicate  only  a  bad  education.  They  are  no  test  of  the  worth 
of  conduct.  The  really  moral  life  finds  socialized  conduct,  the 
proper  volitional  response  to  a  common  life,  largely  automatic,  — 


312  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

a  second  nature  controlling  the  primitive  type.  The  sense  of 
effort  should  be  a  transition  stage  to  spontaneous  obedience  of 
the  moral  law.  In  any  case  idealized  conduct  means  controlled 
or  measured  conduct,  and  this  can  only  be  had  through  training. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  ideal  life  the  gods  set  labor.  Spon- 
taneous mastery,  absorbed  attention  in  the  ideal  object,  in  the 
case  of  any  ideal  activity,  logical,  aesthetic,  or  moral,  is  the  fruit 
of  training  and  self-control.  The  feeling  of  effort  indicates  the 
novice.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  worth  of  the  activity. 
Some  people  could  not  give  spontaneous  attention  to  anything 
but  rag  time.  That  does  not  make  them  moral. 

Each  form  of  ideal  activity  has  its  ought,  its  sense  of  incom- 
pleteness, the  command  of  the  ideal,  or,  to  use  Professor  Palmer's 
phrase,  the  command  of  the  whole  to  the  part.  Beauty  and 
truth  as  creative  activities  have  their  ought  as  well  as  the 
moral  law,  —  their  sense  of  failure,  their  feeling  for  potential 
wholeness,  " which  bids  us  neither  sit  nor  stand  but  go"  that 
we  may  attain  the  ideal.  From  life's  larger  point  of  view,  at 
any  rate,  the  poet,  as  well  as  the  sick  soul  cowering  before  the 
categorical  imperative,  feels  the  discrepancy  between  what  is 
and  what  ought  to  be.  Hence  the  sense  of  fragmentariness, 
hence  the  effort  at  improvement.  The  ought  characterizes 
all  ideal  realization  in  the  process  of  becoming;  and  seldom, 
especially  in  the  deeper  genius,  is  the  process  complete.  Tragic 
is  the  moment  when  he  can  say  to  his  life's  ideal :  "  Verweile 
dock  du  bist  so  schon." 

Sometimes,  indeed,  for  a  limited  purpose,  the  consciousness 
of  discrepancy  between  attainment  and  ideals  scarcely  enters 
into  the  particular  judgment.  Sometimes  a  particular  truth 
seems  to  come  as  a  flash  of  intuition,  the  brief  lyric  pours 
into  a  final  mold  in  an  ecstatic  birth  of  beauty,  the  good  deed 
comes  with  a  sense  of  enthusiasm  and  self-surrender  instead  of 
effort.  Each  viewed  in  its  isolation  seems  final  and  satisfying. 
But  such  cases  are  exceptions,  and,  even  so,  are  the  gift  of  a 
previous  set  of  the  mind,  subconsciously  incubated  in  the  mean- 
time. Goethe's  "  Faust "  required  a  lifetime  of  labor  to  produce 
and  takes  as  long  to  appreciate. 

As  regards  results  to  life  as  a  whole,  here  too  no  sharp  line 
can  be  drawn.  It  is  no  detraction  from  beauty  that  it  has 


THE   IDENTITY   OF  THE   IDEALS  313 

results  on  our  larger  activity.  On  the  contrary,  it  inevitably 
has  such  results  and  must  be  judged  in  a  measure  by  them. 
Art  has  no  license  to  violate  our  other  ideal  demands.  It 
must  be  true  to  science  in  dealing  with  an  actual  world.  It 
cannot  make  its  own  anatomy  or  space  perspective.  It  must 
be  estimated  in  scientific  terms,  even  though  it  is  not  science. 
So  likewise  must  it  be  considered  with  reference  to  the  larger 
race  life.  It  has  subserved  and  still  subserves  a  use  in  race 
survival.  As  the  grown  man's  play  it  has  its  important  place 
in  the  economy  of  human  life.  To  be  beautiful  an  object  must 
be  idealized,  i.e.  liberated  from  the  sensuous.  Its  suggestion 
must  be  ideal  suggestion.  Thus  it  purifies.  The  same  can  be 
said  of  truth.  Truth  has  its  results,  its  larger  setting  in  life. 
While  it  may  not  be  pursued  for  its  use,  it  has  its  use  in  making 
life  more  efficient.  While  it  is  not  morality,  it  is  a  noble  pursuit 
and  gives  dignity  and  calm  to  the  soul.  Nor  is  the  moral  ideal 
to  be  judged  merely  by  effects.  It  is  sometimes,  notably  in  its 
highest  instances,  tragically  out  of  accord  with  its  temporary 
environment.  Sometimes  it  is  permanently  impracticable, 
though  nevertheless  noble  and  inspiring.  Extreme  other- 
worldliness,  "love  your  enemies/'  mystical  union,  etc.,  may 
never  become  practical  types,  but  nevertheless  they  furnish  noble 
reliefs  and  corrective  viewpoints  to  our  work-a-day,  prudential 
world. 

If  again  we  try  to  differentiate  the  ideals  from  the  point  of 
view  of  development,  we  must  be  consistent.  We  must  be  care- 
ful to  take  them  from  the  same  standpoint.  If  we  look  at  them 
as  ideal  results  or  in  retrospect,  they  of  course  cannot  develop. 
The  past  as  such  does  not  change.  The  hypothesis  of  Thales, 
whether  true  or  mistaken,  marks  a  mile  post  in  science.  The 
emancipation  proclamation  taken  as  a  deed  remains  what  it  is. 
It  may  be  evaluated  as  a  historic  event  independent  of  the 
agent.  So  with  the  art  work.  Schubert's  "  Unfinished  Sym- 
phony "  is  as  finished  as  it  is  going  to  be. 

If  we  take  the  creative  point  of  view,  the  particular  results 
become  moments  in  a  life  history.  Hypotheses  are  steps  in  dis- 
covery, deeds  are  the  marking  places  in  the  progressive  realiza- 
tion of  will,  each  successive  work  unfolds  the  larger  motives  and 
possibilities  of  the  artist.  Each  Madonna  of  Raphael  gives 


314  A  REALISTIC    UNIVERSE 

not  only  the  spectator,  but  the  artist  an  additional  insight  into 
his  idealized  conception  of  womanhood;  and  in  the  series  we 
can  see  improvement,  clearer  consciousness  of  aim.  Finished 
results,  —  absolutely  finished,  —  are  but  an  illusion  from  the 
creative  point  of  view,  a  testimony  to  our  limitations. 

If  you  look  again  at  ideal  striving  with  reference  to  the 
plasticity  of  its  world,  it  would  seem  at  first  glance  as  though 
we  had  struck  a  profound  difference.  Truth  seems  to  most 
people  to  deal  with  a  rigid,  predetermined  constitution,  given 
outright,  while  in  ethics,  in  a  strenuous  way,  and  in  aesthetics, 
in  perhaps  a  genial  way,  we  must  somehow  and  to  some  extent 
alter  the  world  to  fit  our  ideals.  The  contrast,  I  think,  is  more 
superficial  than  real.  Truth,  so  far  as  it  is  our  activity,  is  a 
genuinely  creative  process.  If  there  is  an  absolute  truth,  our 
efforts  must  indeed  seem  feeble  copies  to  an  omniscient  spectator. 
But  we  have  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  an  absolute  truth  any 
more  than  we  have  an  intuition  of  absolute  beauty.  So  far 
as  our  finite  experience  is  concerned,  we  create  truth,  —  as  we 
create  institutions  and  art,  —  to  meet  our  needs.  In  neither 
case  do  we  proceed  independent  of  experience.  We  must  select 
out  of  its  richness  the  significant  aspects.  In  neither  case  do 
we  make  the  laws  arbitrarily,  but  rather  discover  their  implica- 
tions in  our  nature  and  in  the  nature  of  the  universe.  In  the 
last  analysis,  in  either  case,  we  may  be  imitating  an  absolute 
mind,  but  that  does  not  alter  our  finite  problem.  The  realm 
of  truth  is  as  plastic  in  the  hands  of  the  potter  as  the  world  of 
beauty.  The  seemingly  more  rigid  character  of  the  former  is 
due  to  taking  truth  in  retrospect  instead  of  in  prospect,  as  made 
rather  than  in  the  making. 

The  contrasts  which  we  have  examined  have  been  made  so 
striking  by  taking  ideal  activities  from  different  points  of  view, 
—  the  point  of  view  of  the  spectator  being  contrasted  with  that 
of  the  producer,  the  part-point  of  view  with  the  whole-point 
of  view,  the  point  of  view  of  effort  with  the  point  of  view  of 
mastery,  the  point  of  view  of  the  internal  meaning  with  the 
point  of  view  of  the  external  relations.  We  can  look  at  any  of 
our  ideal  activities  from  these  and  other  points  of  view.  We 
can,  for  example,  look  at  beauty  from  the  point  of  view  of 
creative  activity  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  spectator  or 


THE   IDENTITY   OF  THE   IDEALS  315 

assimilator.  So  in  the  case  of  truth  or  virtue.  We  can  look 
at  separate  results,  —  separate  concepts,  separate  deeds,  or 
separate  pictures,  —  or  we  can  regard  them  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  self-realizing  process  of  truth,  beauty,  and  virtue. 
In  any  case  we  must  be  careful,  in  comparing  the  ideals,  to  adopt 
the  same  point  of  view  for  each  comparison,  —  to  compare 
development  with  development,  creative  activity  with  creative 
activity,  finished  product  with  finished  product,  etc.  The 
confusing  of  points  of  view  led  to  the  failure  of  the  above 
comparisons. 

So  long  as  we  regard  our  ideal  activities  from  the  same  point 
of  view,  we  find  that  what  we  can  say  of  one  ideal  in  the  way 
of  formal  characterization  we  can  always  say  of  the  others. 
There  may  be  pedagogical  convenience  in  setting  the  ideals 
over  against  each  other  for  certain  purposes.  But  the  difference 
finally  does  not  lie  in  the  form,  but  in  the  content.  In  our  sur- 
vey we  have  seen  how  some  have  emphasized  the  abstract 
character  of  truth  as  wholly  abstract.  Some  have  emphasized 
the  selective  character  of  art  as  complete  isolation.  Some  have 
emphasized  the  infinite  demand  of  the  moral  law  and  contrasted 
it  with  the  finitude  of  our  other  ideals.  But  these  are  not  fair 
contrasts.  They  are  not  made  from  the  same  point  of  view. 
The  abstractions  of  truth  must  be  made,  as  must  the  selections 
of  art  and  virtue,  in  the  service  of  attaining  a  larger  insight  into 
the  concreteness  of  life,  not  for  the  sake  of  abstraction.  Art, 
like  truth  and  virtue,  only  isolates  for  clearness  and  distinctness. 
The  seeming  isolation  of  the  frame,  —  of  the  specific  science,  of 
the  particular  art  work,  of  the  particular  life  conduct,  — 
merges  in  its  depths  into  the  cosmic  background  and  can  be 
understood  only  with  reference  to  this.  The  object  as  framed 
in  the  focus  of  attention  serves  but  to  suggest  a  vague  sentiment 
or  "  recollection"  of  the  constitution  of  the  universe  which  makes 
certain  ideal  demands  upon  itself  through  us  and  in  which  the 
sharp  outlines  of  our  abstraction  fade  into  the  moving,  continu- 
ous woof  of  reality.  The  larger  part  of  the  meaning  is  always 
in  the  fringe.  And  if  the  ideal,  as  in  the  case  of  moral  striving, 
appears  as  an  infinite  imperative,  this  is  no  less  true  of  our  other 
ideal  demands  in  so  far  as  we  dwell  upon  the  prospective,  cre- 
ative side  and  measure  the  felt  potentialities  of  human  nature  in 


316  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

terms  of  its  finite  attainment.  We  must  strive  to  bring  clear- 
ness and  distinctness  not  only  into  the  ideal  object,  but  we  must 
bring  such  clearness  and  distinctness  into  the  relations  of  the 
ideals  themselves,  and  thus  rescue  them  from  the  confusion  of 
mixed  view-points. 

Ill 

Having  laid  down  the  thesis  that  the  ideals,  as  abstract  or 
formal,  are  identical  in  all  our  striving  for  evaluation,  we  must 
now  try  to  make  clear  what  these  ideals  are.  It  will  be  seen  on 
scrutiny  that  our  ideal  activity  implies  four  demands  which  the 
object  must  meet.  They  may  be  stated  as  unity,  harmony, 
simplicity,  and  universality.  In  the  first  place  there  must  be 
unity.  The  various  parts  of  the  situation  must  be  capable  of 
being  understood  in  terms  of  one  idea,  they  must  follow  from  a 
common  principle  or  purpose  which  they  are  seen  to  embody. 
This  can  be  shown  in  scientific  synthesis,  whether  inductive  or 
deductive.  A  generalization  is  never  a  mere  collection  or 
summary  of  particulars.  The  mere  cinematographic  registra- 
tion of  facts  in  repetitive  memory  does  not  constitute  truth. 
The  sequence  of  rain  and  sunshine,  weddings  and  divorces, 
births  and  funerals  is  a  meaningless  show  unless  we  can  read  the 
sequence  in  terms  of  a  universal.  Events,  in  order  to  be  science, 
must  be  seen  to  follow  from  an  hypothesis,  and  the  hypothesis 
from  the  events.  They  must,  for  our  pragmatic  purposes  at 
least,  embody  an  idea  or  tendency.  Bodies  must  not  merely 
fall,  but  they  must  be  predictable  in  terms  of  a  mathematical 
law ;  life  must  not  merely  present  a  riotous  sequence  of  change, 
but  there  must  be  within  it  a  tendency  to  change  in  definite 
ways.  There  must  be  overlapping,  the  unity  of  a  universal. 

The  same  is  true  in  art.  What  we  must  first  discover  in  the 
object  of  beauty  is  the  idea  expressed  in  the  details,  the  universal 
embodied  in  the  diversity  of  parts.  This  universal  may  not 
lie  at  the  surface.  You  must  live  in  the  presence  of  the  Sistine 
Madonna,  you  must  be  willing  to  give  serious  study  to  Hamlet, 
to  grasp  the  significant  unity.  Else  the  Sistine  painting  is  a 
collection  of  more  or  less  pleasing  figures,  Hamlet  a  series  of 
more  or  less  interesting  episodes.  You  can't  go  to  sleep  over 
the  great  masterpieces  any  more  than  over  the  great  scientific 


THE   IDENTITY   OF   THE    IDEALS  317 

hypotheses  and  grasp  their  significance.  You  must  enter  into 
the  creative  idea  of  the  artist. 

What  is  true  of  science  and  art  is  likewise  true  of  virtue. 
The  virtuous  life  is  not  a  series  of  episodes,  —  of  more  or  less 
beneficent  impulsive  acts.  Such  a  life  is  non-moral.  You 
must  find  the  meaning,  the  motive,  the  idea  to  be  realized  in  the 
multitude  of  events  and  choices.  They  must  be  strung  on  a 
universal  in  the  light  of  which  they  can  be  interpreted.  If  you 
are  taking  account  of  life  as  a  spectator,  you  must  put  yourself 
at  the  actor's  point  of  view,  or  as  nearly  so  as  your  human  limi- 
tations permit.  Not  only  through  the  ages,  but  through  the 
acts  of  each  individual  will  with  which  you  strive  to  sympathize, 
there  must  run  a  purpose.  The  shallow  excuse:  "I  did  not 
mean  it,"  is  an  attempt  to  place  oneself  outside  of  moral  re- 
sponsibility. When  it  is  clear  that  a  deed  follows  from  no  prin- 
ciple, we  not  only  individually,  but  legally,  abandon  the  ethical 
criterion  of  good  or  bad.  We  see  then  that  the  first  demand  upon 
ideal  activity,  whether  taken  from  the  agent's  or  the  spectator's 
point  of  view,  is  the  discovery  of  an  idea  or  universal  in  the 
variety  of  facts. 

In  the  second  place,  in  all  ideal  activity  there  must  be  har- 
mony, —  the  parts  must  support  or  reenforce  each  other  within  a 
whole.  Take  it  first  in  the  realm  of  science :  Facts  must  lean 
on  ideas,  and  ideas  on  facts.  There  must  be  fluency  of  transi- 
tions or  adjustments.  There  must  be  not  merely  evidence,  but 
organized  disjunctive  evidence,  where  the  parts  supplement  and 
reenforce  each  other.  And  the  evidence  must  be  adequate. 
It  must  be  proportional  in  complexity  to  the  idea  which  it  aims 
to  support.  We  cannot  rest  a  momentous  hypothesis  on  slender 
evidence  and  feel  security  or  ease  in  the  relation,  any  more  than 
we  can  rest  an  immense  edifice  on  slender  pillars  and  have  our 
will  satisfied  with  the  result. 

Harmony  in  science  means  not  merely  organization  within 
one  hypothesis,  but  it  means  also  that  hypothesis  must  support 
and  reenforce  hypothesis  within  the  overlapping  fields  of  expe- 
rience. Species  must  supplement  each  other,  as  well  as  indi- 
vidual lean  upon  individual  within  the  larger  kind  which  we 
strive  to  define.  Harmony,  organization,  is  therefore  of  the 
very  nature  of  scientific  system.  One  negative  instance,  one 


318  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

outstanding  fact  which  fails  to  support  the  rest  within  the  scope 
of  the  idea,  destroys  the  idea's  claim  to  express  the  facts  of  the 
kind  and  challenges  to  a  new  idea. 

In  art  the  importance  of  harmony  is  even  more  obvious.  It 
is  not  enough  that  each  part  bears  the  imprint  of  the  idea,  like 
a  heap  of  stamped  bricks,  but  they  must  mutually  reenforce 
the  idea.  In  Guido  Reni's  Aurora  every  part  testifies  to  the 
glory  of  the  coming  day.  But  more  than  that,  each  part  helps 
to  reenforce  the  idea.  Movement,  brilliancy,  color,  beauty  of 
form,  contrast,  —  all  cooperate  and  converge  to  fasten  the 
attention  to  the  idea  of  nature's  oft-repeated  wonder.  In 
dramatic  opera  the  human  voice,  the  instrumental  music,  the 
scenic  setting,  the  acting,  —  all  combine  to  reenforce  the  idea 
of  the  composer.  Let  any  one  be  false,  and  the  harmony 
is  marred. 

That  harmony  is  essential  to  the  moral  life  has  been  em- 
phasized both  by  common  speech  and  by  the  philosopher. 
The  moral  life  is  the  balanced  life,  the  rounded  life,  the  life 
in  which  each  tendency  of  human  nature  plays  its  proper  part, 
each  event  receives  its  proper  emphasis.  Even  with  unity  of 
motive  a  life  can  easily  be  marred  by  wrong  emphasis,  by  making 
the  trivial  into  the  focal  and  the  important  into  the  by-play. 
The  virtuous  life  is  the  life  which  gives  each  interest  and  moment 
its  due.  It  is  a  just  life.  What  harmony  in  each  case  —  logi- 
cal, aesthetic,  and  moral  —  emphasizes  is  that  each  part  has  a 
claim  which  must  be  recognized;  and  in  turn  that  no  part 
may  stand  by  itself.  It  has  a  claim,  but  it  is  a  claim  within  a 
whole.  The  parts  must  support  the  principal  idea ;  but  this 
they  can  do  only  when  the  idea  is  adequate  to  incorporate  the 
parts. 

Again,  all  ideal  activity  demands  simplicity  or  economy. 
The  ideal  tolerates  nothing  superfluous.  It  is  jealous  of  its 
rights  to  express  itself.  Sometimes  the  characteristic  of  sim- 
plicity has  been  emphasized  as  all-sufficient  to  define  ideal 
activity.  Truth  is  simple,  beauty  is  simple,  virtue  is  simple. 
So  they  are.  But  simplicity  alone  does  not  define  these  atti- 
tudes. In  the  first  place,  simplicity  is  meaningless  until  you 
specify  your  type  of  unity.  It  expresses  the  negative  rather 
than  the  positive  side  of  ideal  selection.  Again,  simplicity  does 


THE    IDENTITY   OF   THE   IDEALS  319 

not  necessarily  mean  agreement  or  harmony  within  the  unity. 
We  must  not  read  the  parts  out  of  court,  as  has  so  often  been 
done,  for  the  sake  of  simplicity.  Parmenides  did  so  and  left 
nothing  but  empty  being,  —  neither  true,  nor  beautiful,  nor 
virtuous.  Simplicity  is  only  one  ideal  demand  and  must  be 
pursued  in  harmony  with  the  other  demands. 

In  science,  the  demand  for  simplicity  means  that  entities 
or  hypotheses  must  not  be  multiplied.  The  simplest  hypothesis 
which  will  meet  the  facts  is  regarded  as  scientifically  true.  Our 
theories  must  be  molded  upon  reality  as  we  must  take  it  in  our 
experience.  While  the  more  complex  Ptolemaic  astronomy 
might  be  made  to  meet  the  facts  by  cumbrous  additions,  we 
believe  that  the  simpler  Copernican  system  comes  nearer 
expressing  the  real  stellar  relations.  We  must  reduce  our 
theory  to  the  fewest  principles  which  will  meet  the  situation. 

In  art,  as  in  science,  simplicity  is  a  fundamental  demand, 
but  here  too  simplicity  must  vary  with  the  idea  to  be  expressed. 
Hamlet  cannot  be  expressed  in  as  simple  terms  as  the  clown. 
The  idea  must  have  adequate  complexity.  Where,  however, 
the  inferior  artist  betrays  his  lack  of  genius  is  in  the  superfluous 
details,  the  obscuring  promiscuity.  No  wonder  art  has  seemed 
the  mere  removal  of  the  superfluous,  the  chiseling  away  of  the 
extraneous  marble.  This  point  of  view,  however,  forgets  that 
marbles  do  not  come  veined  with  Apollos  and  Venuses  and  that 
simplicity  itself  is  meaningless  except  with  reference  to  the 
selective  idea. 

In  the  moral  life,  too,  simplicity  is  important.  There  must 
be  directness  of  aim,  the  suppression  of  irrelevant  detail,  em- 
phasis of  the  essential.  How  many  a  life  loses  itself  in  the  mere 
multitude  of  busy  episodes.  The  great  life  differs  from  the 
small  in  its  simplicity,  as  the  novel  differs  from  gossip.  Here 
again  simplicity  is  not  the  only  demand.  Mephistopheles  is 
more  simple  than  Faust.  We  must  judge  life  by  its  type  of  unity 
and  the  adequacy  of  this  unity  to  harmonize  the  claims  of  life. 
There  may  be  over-specialization  as  well  as  too  much  com- 
plexity. The  idea  alone  can  decide  what  details  to  suppress, 
what  tendencies  to  emphasize. 

Finally,  all  ideal  activity  implies  universality  in  the  sense 
of  social  objectivity.  This  does  not  mean  a  consensus  of  all. 


320  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

It  means  that  those  with  adequate  development  and  training 
should  be  able  to  share  with  the  agent  the  ideal  object.  Ideal 
activity  cannot  terminate  in  mere  private  states  of  consciousness. 
This  again  can  be  seen  in  all  the  varieties  of  content  which  the 
ideal  may  take.  First  of  all,  there  can  be  no  private  truth. 
The  processes  of  truth  must  be  capable  of  verification  by  other 
observers.  Else  we  have  mythology,  hallucination,  error. 
Science  is  primarily  a  social  institution,  the  outgrowth  of  our 
common  mental  constitution  and  common  situations.  Neither 
can  beauty  be  private.  It  may  require  development  and  culture 
on  the  part  of  the  spectators.  But  if  no  one  but  one  should 
ever  find  an  object  beautiful,  we  would  probably  regard  him 
as  having  a  queer  taste.  Art,  too,  is  a  social  institution,  our 
common  joy  in  creative  activity  and  its  results.  It  must  define 
common  situations.  The  social  character  of  the  ideal  becomes 
still  more  striking  in  the  case  of  the  moral  life.  We  may  over- 
look an  individual's  erroneous  thinking,  we  may  laugh  at  his 
outlandish  taste,  but  we  cannot  neglect  his  anti-social  conduct. 
Our  ethical  judgments  are  through  and  through  social  judg- 
ments, —  the  balancing  of  claims  from  the  standpoint  of  their 
fitness  for  a  common  life.  True,  the  immediate  social  environ- 
ment may  prove  wrong.  It  may  give  the  hemlock  to  Socrates 
and  crucify  Jesus.  But  to  some  social  environment  our  con- 
duct must  seem  valid  and  fruitful,  if  we  are  at  length  to  be 
pronounced  moral.  Only  the  immoral  man  claims  an  ethics 
of  his  own,  and  he  only  as  an  exception  for  himself,  not  for 
others.  Even  the  fruits  of  vice  could  not  be  enjoyed  in  an 
anti-social  world. 

We  have  seen  so  far  how  in  each  mode  of  ideal  activity  the 
ideal  is  identical.  It  is  the  content  that  individuates.  We 
have  examined  in  turn  the  four  characteristics  of  the  ideal  and 
their  application  to  the  different  ideal  activities.  The  question 
may  be  raised :  Cannot  these  characteristics  be  still  more  sim- 
plified ?  This  has  been  attempted  in  the  past.  I  shall  note  only 
one  such  possibility,  and  that  is  the  reduction  of  our  ideal 
categories  to  the  demand  for  clearness  and  distinctness.  Des- 
cartes made  this  the  final  criterion  of  truth.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested by  Hildebrand  as  the  final  criterion  of  art.  I  believe 
that  such  a  reduction  is  impossible  if  we  give  this  criterion  the 


THE    IDENTITY   OF   THE    IDEALS  321 

subjective  significance  which  Descartes  attached  to  it.  We 
must  reduce  it  to  its  "  cash  value,"  in  terms  of  the  relations  which 
we  discover  within  the  content  that  embodies  the  idea.  What 
people  feel  to  be  clear  and  distinct  is  as  various  as  their  tastes ; 
and  so  long  as  we  place  the  criterion  on  a  subjective  basis,  we 
can  have  no  standardization.  In  fact  a  criterion  which  needs 
to  be  standardized,  as  Descartes  tried  to  standardize  clearness 
and  distinctness  by  an  appeal  to  a  God  who  would  not  deceive, 
is  hardly  a  criterion.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  give  clearness 
and  distinctness  a  pragmatic  significance,  it  will  be  found  to 
imply  all  the  ideal  characteristics  already  stated.  Prag- 
matically, it  becomes  the  clear  and  distinct  expression  of  an 
idea  in  its  selected  content,  or  the  clarifying  of  the  content  in 
terms  of  the  idea.  Such  clear  and  distinct  expression  must  have 
unity  within  the  parts.  The  idea  must  include  the  facts,  or  the 
facts  must  fall  within  the  idea.  There  must  be  organization 
or  the  mutual  support  of  the  parts.  There  must  be  no  irrelevant 
details.  There  must  be  social  objectivity.  Just  because  the 
idea  is  thus  pragmatically  clear  and  distinct,  it  must  compel  the 
social  approval  of  the  competent. 

IV 

If  ideals  are  differentiated  by  their  matter  and  not  by  their 
form,  we  must  cast  a  passing  glance  at  the  content  of  the  ideals. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  content,  we  may  take  human  nature 
in  its  three  classic  modes  as  cognitive,  as  appreciative,  and  as 
volitional,  bearing  in  mind  that  ideals  have  no  application  at 
all  until  human  nature  attains  the  complexity  of  being  con- 
sciously selective.  Ideal  demands,  when  applied  to  the  relation 
of  ideas  to  perceptions  and  to  other  ideas,  become  the  quest 
for  science.  To  attain  fluency,  harmony,  simplicity,  and  uni- 
versality as  regards  the  agreement  of  the  idea  with  the  consti- 
tution which  it  intends  is  ideal  realization  in  the  realm  of 
knowing.  But  we  have  an  affective  nature,  too,  and  objects 
must  be  measured  not  merely  in  terms  of  their  existence,  but 
in  terms  of  their  value.  To  make  objects  fluent,  harmonious, 
clear  and  distinct,  and  universal,  so  far  as  our  human  appreciative 
nature  is  concerned,  constitutes  ideal  realization  in  the  realm  of 
appreciation.  Lastly,  our  volitional  claims  must  be  measured  in 


322  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

terms  of  other  volitional  claims  in  individual  and  social  history. 
To  fulfill  the  ideal  demands  of  fluency,  harmony,  simplicity, 
and  universality  in  the  realm  of  our  volitional  conduct,  consti- 
tutes ideal  realization  in  terms  of  virtue. 

We  would  have,  then,  as  our  criterion  the  clearness  and 
distinctness  of  the  idea  as  expressed  in  the  selected  object,  — 
the  object  of  thought,  the  object  of  feeling,  the  object  of  volun- 
tary conduct.  When  the  clearness  and  distinctness  pertains  to 
agreement  with  a  selected  constitution,  we  have  truth ;  when  it 
pertains  to  appreciation,  we  have  art ;  when  it  pertains  to  the 
evaluation  of  will,  we  have  morality.  In  either  case  the  idea 
must  be  adequate,  it  must  be  economic,  it  must  leave  no  out- 
standing details.  The  difference  is  not  in  the  ideal,  but  in  the 
process  or  object  selected. 

It  is  evident  that,  of  the  three,  the  last  overlaps,  in  a  vital 
way,  the  other  aspects  of  our  nature.  Indeed  it  is  impossible 
except  for  abstract  purposes  to  treat  human  nature  as  divided 
into  compartments.  The  ideational  activity  would  be  but  a 
pale  ghost  except  as  floating  in  the  affective  and  volitional  back- 
ground. In  turn,  beauty  must  have  meaning,  and  so  involves 
the  ideational  side.  All  creative  activity  finally  must  have  its 
spring  in  the  will  and  its  tendencies.  If  ideals  are  identical  in 
their  form,  they  also  overlap  in  their  matter.  They  must  blend 
in  the  unity  of  the  one  life. 

I  have  tried  to  show  that  our  ideal  activities  are  identical 
as  regards  their  form,  the  ideal  demands  to  be  realized.  By 
this  insistence  I  do  not  mean  to  ignore  the  fact  that  the  ideal, 
as  realized  in  the  different  modes  of  human  nature,  differentiates 
into  unique  species.  Science,  art,  and  morality  are  different 
in  the  concrete,  as  truly  as  they  are  identical  in  the  abstract. 
They  constitute  specific  embodiments  of  the  will.  When  we 
seek  truth  we  do  not  seek  beauty  as  our  aim,  when  we  seek 
beauty  we  do  not  seek  morality.  Satisfactions  they  all  are ;  and 
as  such  they  are  all  included  in  the  good,  as  Plato  pointed  out 
long  ago.  But  they  are  different  species  of  the  good.  Each 
works  within  a  certain  type  of  material  or  instrument,  through 
which  it  realizes  its  function  in  making  clear  and  distinct 
the  end.  The  matter  or  instrument  of  science  is  conceptual 
relations ;  the  matter  of  art  is  concrete  imagination ;  the  matter 


THE   IDENTITY   OF   THE   IDEALS  323 

of  ethics  is  impulse.  Each  sets  itself  certain  limitations, 
respects  the  nature  of  its  material.  The  ideal,  in  the  case  of 
truth  seeking,  sets  itself  the  limitation  of  agreement  with  a 
selected  constitution,  abstract  or  concrete.  That  our  will 
sometimes  figures  as  a  creative  factor  in  this  constitution,  that 
it  sometimes  makes  ideas  come  true,  does  not  alter  the  necessity 
for  our  cognitive  nature  to  take  account  of  the  facts  as  made, 
of  discovering  the  laws  in  the  sequence.  While  human  nature 
must  make  ideal  demands  upon  the  universe  to  have  truth,  it 
can  only  succeed  provided  that  the  universe  lends  itself  to  such 
idealization.  We  cannot  legislate  arbitrarily  to  nature.  We 
must  try  to  discover  clearness  and  distinctness  within  the  rela- 
tions of  nature.  That  success  here  is  possible  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  reason  is  not  an  arbitrary  addition  to  nature,  but  that 
reason  grows  up  in  the  soil  of  nature,  is  nature's  reflection  upon 
itself. 

In  beauty  the  aim  is  not  the  breaking  up  and  systematizing 
of  reality  for  the  discovery  of  its  constitution,  but  for  the 
sake  of  social  and  constant  objects  of  enjoyment,  —  the  joy  in 
activity  and  contemplation  on  the  part  of  the  developing, 
historic  will.  This  producing  of  agreement  between  nature  and 
our  affective-emotional  human  nature  is  a  different  value  or 
satisfaction  from  that  which  our  search  for  truth  yields.  Here 
too,  however,  nature  and  human  nature  must  conspire.  As 
parts  of  the  evolution  of  nature,  we  are  such  and  nature  is  such, 
that  we  can  discern  relations  and  objects  which  furnish  perma- 
nent and  spontaneous  joy  in  the  play  of  our  faculties.  We  are 
made  for  the  sunset  as  much  as  the  sunset  is  made  for  us. 

Finally,  the  ethical  end  in  the  concrete  is  the  harmonious 
adjustment  of  the  individual  to  the  historic  social  will,  —  the 
discovery  of  right  or  justice  in  the  measure  of  volitional  claims. 
Here,  too,  life  or  nature  lends  itself  to  such  adjustments  of 
claims.  Our  ideal  demands  are  found  to  be  practical  and,  in  the 
progressive  realization  of  the  meaning  of  life,  the  only  practical 
ways  of  social  conduct.  Nature  again  conspires  with  human 
nature. 

While  the  concrete  values  or  ways  of  realization  are  different 
for  thought,  feeling,  and  character ;  while  they  lead  to  unique 
satisfaction  of  the  will,  they  must  support  and  supplement 


324  A  REALISTIC    UNIVERSE 

each  other,  and,  because  subjected  to  the  same  ideal  demands, 
they  must  fundamentally  and  ultimately  agree  with  each  other. 
That  is,  the  truth  must,  without  surrendering  its  specific 
character  as  true,  also  be  found  beautiful  and  noble;  and  so 
with  the  other  ideal  values.  "  Human  nature  in  its  progressive 
realization  can  be  seen  to  be  fundamentally  one,  and  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  true  must  be  seen  to  be  fundamentally  bound  up 
with  the  right  and  the  beautiful,  and  all  to  be  species  of  the  good 
of  the  entire  self,  though  this  does  not  prevent  us  from  recogniz- 
ing certain  differentia  in  this  ultimate  good.  The  good  in  the 
concrete  means  proper  functioning  on  the  part  of  human  nature 
in  its  various  relations,  the  harmonious  activity  of  all  its  capac- 
ities, fluency  of  life,  consistency  of  transitions.  The  right 
means  fluency  of  functioning  as  regards  human  individuals  in 
their  institutional  relations,  the  proportional  equalization  of 
claims.  The  beautiful  means  the  harmonious  and  complete  ex- 
pression of  our  ideal  demands  in  terms  of  our  affective  nature,  the 
feeling  of  fitness  and  support  as  regards  the  various  parts  of  the 
aesthetic  object.  Truth  means  the  fluent  termination  of  the  clear 
and  distinct  idea  in  its  intended  facts.  In  the  equilibrated  life 
of  the  individual  as  a  whole,  all  human  nature,  —  cognitive, 
emotional,  and  volitional,  —  must  function  with  ease  and  fluency 
of  transition  without  any  conflict  of  the  activity  for  the  true  with 
the  realization  of  the  beautiful  or  the  right.  They  are  never- 
theless specific  forms  of  the  good ;  and,  in  our  imperfect  finite 
development  there  may  be  provisional  discord."  l  In  the  mean- 
time, while  the  conflict  is  partial  and  halting,  the  unity  on  the 
formal  side  is  clear  and  eternal. 

It  is  clear  that,  in  idealizing  human  nature  as  an  individual 
whole,  the  same  ideal  demands  hold  as  in  the  case  of  the  spe- 
cific types  of  realization.  Here,  too,  there  must  be  unity,  har- 
mony, simplicity,  and  universality.  An  ultimate  ideal  must 
be  found  comprehensive  enough  to  include  all  of  our  human 
tendencies.  Further,  the  parts  must  harmonize  or  reenforce 
each  other.  The  part-ideals  must  work  together  so  as  to  supple- 
ment and  interpenetrate  within  the  whole  of  life.  Here,  too, 
there  must  be  simplification  and  universality.  Within  life  in 
its  wholeness  there  can  be  no  conflict  of  reason. 

1  "Truth  and  Reality,"  pp.  238,  239. 


THE    IDENTITY   OF   THE   IDEALS  325 

Such  wholeness,  however,  we  fail  to  find  within  our  finite 
human  realization.  And  as  our  nature  must  be  loyal  to  such 
a  wholeness  or  perfection  and  cannot  rest  in  the  provisional  and 
partial  realization,  the  religious  consciousness,  the  conception 
and  worship  of  God,  must  eke  out  our  finite  limitations.  In 
our  religious  loyalty  we  feel  that  our  ideals  are  concretely 
realized.  Religion  adds  no  new  values  to  those  already  men- 
tioned. But  it  adds  the  sense  of  completeness,  of  unification, 
and  of  conservation  to  our  finite  ideal  strivings.  The  identity 
of  the  abstract  form  is  here  exchanged  for  the  unique  unity  of  an 
individual  life,  in  which  form  and  content  are  fully  blended, 
where  the  unity  of  the  ideal  purpose  embraces  all  the  facts, 
where  the  parts  all  support  each  other,  where  there  is  clearness 
and  distinctness  of  relationships  of  parts,  and  where  all  mere 
subjectivity  disappears  in  the  organized  whole.  This  final  unity 
of  concrete  interpenetration  is  at  the  other  end  from  the  abstract 
formal  ideals  which  we  have  considered. 

The  end  of  life  is  to  transcend  finality,  in  the  sense  of  abstract 
ideals  with  their  sense  of  obligation,  and  to  reach  spontaneity, 
—  unity  of  form  and  content,  perfect  activity.  In  a  perfect 
being  the  ideals  interpenetrate  each  other  as  they  clothe  them- 
selves in  a  matter  no  longer  foreign  to  themselves,  but  their 
idealized  and  transfigured  embodiment.  This  living  unity 
we  worship  as  God. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
FORM  AND  THE  OUGHT 

The  Nature  of  Form 

WE  have  seen  in  an  earlier  chapter  l  that  all  our  general- 
izations presuppose  three  fundamental  characteristics,  viz. 
variables,  recurrence,  and  form :  It  must  be  possible  to  analyze 
out,  within  the  flux  of  reality,  certain  distinctive  qualities  or 
entities ;  these  must  be  generic,  i.e.  they  must  recur  in  various 
individual  situations,  and  in  various  moments  of  time ;  and, 
lastly,  they  must  be  capable  of  being  formulated  in  terms  of  a 
few  simple  principles,  —  the  object  with  which  we  deal  must 
have  a  definite  "architecture."  This  applies  to  all  our  gener- 
alizations, whether  of  pure  mathematics,  or  of  physics,  or  of 
social  relations. 

Now,  it  is  a  notable  fact  that  while  we  have  recognized  the 
importance  of  the  characteristics  of  variables  and  recurrence, 
the  characteristic  of  form  has  often  been  treated  as  accidental. 
It  has  seemed  somehow  as  though  the  form  were  added  to  the 
constitution  of  reality  by  our  minds.  Our  mind  is  so  constituted 
as  to  read  order  into  the  universe.  It  looks  for  resemblances 
and  groups  things  under  laws  and  kinds.  It  stamps  its  an- 
thropomorphic ideals  and  purposes  upon  its  world.  So  impa- 
tient is  it  of  chaos  and  diversity,  that  it  takes  short  cuts.  It  be- 
comes dogmatic  about  its  superficial  analogies  and  formulae, 
and  treats  them  as  absolute.  Further  investigation,  however, 
discloses  new  diversities  and  complexities.  The  old  formulas 
are  seen  to  be  crude  approximations.  The  cry  is  for  a  first- 
hand acquaintance  with  things.  The  old  generalizations  are 
condemned  as  fictions,  which  in  a  great  measure  they  have 
been.  Sometimes,  the  human  mind  has  become  skeptical  as  to 

i  See  Chapter  III. 
326 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  327 

the  possibility  of  ever  discovering  any  objective  order,  such 
skepticism  being  always  in  proportion  to  the  previous  dogma- 
tism. Moreover,  with  our  human  limitations,  the  subjective 
element  is  likely  ever  to  be  prominent,  and  the  critical  spirit 
is  apt  to  find  again  and  again  that  what  we  had  taken  for  the 
architecture  of  reality  is  in  fact  the  artificial  creation  of  our 
immature  will-to-believe.  Under  such  circumstances,  the 
interest  in  the  individual  variables  comes  to  loom  large;  and 
nominalism  for  the  time  supplants  realism.  Objective  form 
is  for  us  at  any  rate,  as  Plato  saw,  a  limit  in  the  flux  of  human 
opinion. 

It  is  only  fair,  however,  to  point  out  that  our  knowledge  of 
the  diversity  and  generality  of  the  structure  of  our  world  is  no 
more  final  than  our  appreciation  of  its  form.  The  three  must 
proceed  pari  passu.  We  discover  the  diversity  when  we 
attempt  to  sort  it  into  kinds ;  and  we  cannot  know  about  either 
except  as  we  try  to  define  them,  or  formulate  them  into  proposi- 
tions and  aesthetic  structures.  We  cannot  derive  the  generality 
from  the  diversity,  or  the  form  from  either.  The  question  is 
what  diversity  or  generality  is  significant,  —  makes  clear  and 
distinct  the  problem  in  question.  The  principle  of  economy 
cannot  be  deduced  from  mere  happenings  whether  recurrent 
or  otherwise.  That  we  shall  combine  the  predicates  of  reality 
in  certain  ways  to  establish  order  and  meaning  is  a  fact  of 
another  dimension  from  their  mere  chance  existence. 

It  would  seem  to  the  unbiased  mind  that  the  aspect  of  form 
has  the  same  basis  in  the  nature  of  things  as  have  the  dis- 
criminations of  individual  occurrences  and  their  resemblances. 
We  do  not  make  the  laws  of  falling  bodies,  or  chemical  propor- 
tions, or  the  natural  series  of  elements,  or  the  unity  of  the  or- 
ganism, or  the  consistency  of  the  argument,  or  the  harmony  of 
the  art  work  when  we  discover  them.  In  so  far  as  our  formula- 
tions really  work,  we  must  regard  them  as  the  architecture  of 
the  world  which  we  strive  to  know,  and  not  merely  as  the 
architecture  of  our  mind.  It  seems  reasonable  that  the  untiring 
search  of  our  mind  for  order,  faulty  and  stumbling  though  it  is 
in  execution,  is  somehow  a  reflex  of  the  world  of  which  mind 
is  the  conscious  expression.  As  Santayana  puts  it:  "It  is 
no  part  of  the  essence  of  numbers  to  be  congenial  to  me ;  but 


328  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

it  has  perhaps  become  part  of  my  genius  to  have  affinity  to  them, 
simply  because  nature  of  which  I  am  a  part,  and  to  which  all 
ideas  must  refer  to  be  relevant  to  my  destiny,  happens  to  have 
mathematical  form." 1  As  our  primitive  instincts  are  rec- 
ognized to  be  responses  to  fundamental  characteristics  and 
demands  of  our  environment,  so  we  must  recognize  that  our 
higher  instincts  which  have  to  do  with  form,  with  order  and 
beauty,  are  indeed  orientations  to  the  universe  of  which  we 
are  a  part.  They  are,  in  the  Platonic  sense, j" recollections" 
of  the  constitution  which  interpenetrates  human  nature  as 
well  as  nature  and  of  which  we  become  conscious  under  the 
stress  of  social  dialectic.  As  the  flatfish  imitates  through  its 
eyes  the  geometrical  pattern  of  the  bottom  upon  which  it 
rests,  not  knowing  what  it  is  doing,  so  the  mind,  through  a 
long  process  of  trial  and  error,  comes  to  imitate  the  formal 
constitution  of  the  universe.  For  the  most  part,  its  adaptation, 
too,  is  blind  groping  with  relative  approximation.  Only  as  it 
rises  to  reflective  consciousness,  can  it  begin  to  bring  into  clear- 
ness and  distinctness  the  higher  laws  of  its  being.  And  even 
then,  it  must  be  largely  prejudiced  by  the  fact  that  it  must 
judge  the  great  world  through  the  peculiar  limitations  in  which 
its  pattern  reveals  itself  in  human  experience. 

From  the  fact,  however,  that  the  laws  of  thought  are  implied 
in  our  mental  constitution,  and  have  been  forced  upon  it  in 
its  adjustments  to  the  objective  world,  we  have  at  any  rate  a 
presumption  that  the  laws  of  thought  are  the  laws  of  things. 
This  presumption  comes  to  be  further  verified  through  thought's 
success  in  dealing  with  its  world  in  its  hypothetical  procedure. 
Reason  is  not  an  accident,  but  has  come  to  pass,  and  is  success- 
ful, because  the  world  is  somehow  congenial  to  it.  The  prag- 
matic procedure  must  judge  by  fruits,  and  if  ideals  are  outcomes 
of  the  human  experiment  to  meet  its  world,  they  must  have  a 
basis  in  the  nature  of  reality.  An  abstract  analysis  which  em- 
phasizes elements,  and  neglects  the  organizing  relations,  gives 
us  bricks  without  mortar,  and  fails  to  restore  the  structure 
which  it  has  torn  to  pieces. 

There  have  indeed  been  true  realists  in  the  past  who  have 
recognized  the  importance  of  form  —  your  Plato  and  Aristotle, 

1  "Winds  of  Doctrine,"  p.  120. 


FORM  AND   THE   OUGHT  329 

your  Spinoza  and  Leibniz.  The  difficulty  that  we  meet  is 
that  they  have  not  been  clear  as  to  the  nature  of  form.  There 
has  been  especially  a  tendency  to  confuse  form  with  the  concept 
of  activity.  Even  Plato,  the  first  to  appreciate  the  reality 
and  significance  of  form,  sometimes  labors  under  this  confusion. 
In  the  "  Sophist,"  he  makes  his  Ideas  forces  in  order  to  guaran- 
tee their  efficacy  which,  no  doubt,  seemed  hazy  enough  to  his 
contemporaries.  As  imitated  by  our  purposive  will,  form,  no 
doubt,  comes  to  have  efficacy,  since  organized  effort,  whether 
individual  or  social,  is  more  effective  and  economic  than  un- 
organized; but  as  pure  form,  it  can  have  no  more  efficacy 
than  other  abstractions. 

The  poverty  of  Aristotle's  ultimate  concepts  leads  to  the  same 
difficulty.  Aristotle's  two  ultimate  concepts  are  matter  and 
form.  But  matter,  by  hypothesis,  is  a  purely  passive  principle, 
hence  form  must  be  the  active  principle  in  order  to  account 
for  motion.  It  is  true  that  Aristotle  is  by  no  means  consistent 
in  the  use  of  these  concepts.  Matter  sometimes  seems  to  be 
endowed  with  a  certain  refractoriness  or  inertia.  The  active 
principle,  again,  is  sometimes  treated  in  a  mechanical  fashion 
as  moving  the  world  by  push.  But  in  the  last  analysis,  hazy 
though  his  statement  is,  it  seems  to  be  form  which  exercises  an 
attractive  influence  upon  matter  —  the  higher  stages  of  form 
upon  the  lower,  and  pure  form  upon  the  process  as  a  whole. 
Upon  one  thing,  however,  Aristotle  is  clear,  and  that  is  that 
form  is  not  produced  by  the  process,  but  legislates  to  the  proc- 
ess. Hence  evolution  is  not  a  one  way  process,  from  formless- 
ness to  form,  as  Herbert  Spencer  would  have  us  believe;  but 
form  in  all  the  varying  themes  and  movements  of  cosmic  evolu- 
tion is  always  equally  real. 

Aristotle's  difficulty  shows  itself  not  only  in  his  concept 
of  evolution,  but  in  his  concept  of  definition.  A  thing  must  be 
defined  through  its  functions.  Hence  the  functions  constitute 
the  form  of  the  thing.  But  since  the  functions  are  an  indefinite 
number,  we  never  could  have  definition  on  this  basis.  Rather 
form  consists  in  the  selection  of  such  functions  as  are  relevant, 
as  will  make  the  thing  or  class  clear  and  distinct.  It  has  to  do 
somehow  with  economy  and  simplicity,  not  with  the  endless 
variety  of  the  perceived  world.  Here  the  advantage  appears 


330  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

of  distinguishing  between  the  concept  of  energy,  with  its  indef- 
inite number  of  variables,  and  the  concept  of  form.  Form 
has  to  do,  not  with  transformation,  but  with  formulation  — 
with  the  possibility  of  denning  our  situations  in  the  terms  of 
clear  and  distinct  principles.  We  have  seen  that  the  simpler 
and  more  stereotyped  kinds  of  reality,  such  as  are  dealt  with 
in  mechanics,  have  the  advantage  in  simplicity ;  but  the  tend- 
ency towards  clear  and  distinct  types  is  present  in  the  more 
complex  stages  of  reality,  too,  —  in  the  world  of  life  and  mind, 
with  their  creative  transmutations.  The  bias  of  the  human 
mind  for  such  clearness  and  distinctness  must  be  regarded  as  a 
cosmic  fact. 

Spinoza  is  a  striking  example  of  the  confusion  of  form  with 
activity.  When  he  is  not  speaking  as  a  physicist  or  psycholo- 
gist, but  treating  of  reality  from  an  ethical  and  metaphysical 
point  of  view,  activity  becomes  identical  with  clear  and  distinct 
ideas.  Now  it  cannot  be  disputed  that  activity  becomes 
valuable  in  proportion  as  it  is  organized  activity,  with  a  clear 
and  distinct  direction.  It  is  thus,  that  it  becomes  formulable  and 
understandable.  But  it  is  not  the  clearness  and  distinctness 
which  produce  the  activity.  They  have  to  do  with  another  at- 
tribute of  reality. 

Leibniz  has,  in  the  main,  copied  Aristotle  and  his  ambiguities. 
The  monads  develop  by  their  inherent  form,  but  they  also 
seem  to  be  stimulated  to  do  so  by  the  existence  of  a  hierarchy 
of  monads,  having  for  its  poles,  confused  unconscious  percep- 
tion as  the  lower  limit,  and  the  clear  and  distinct  self-conscious- 
ness of  God  as  the  upper  limit.  Leibniz,  however,  sometimes 
drops  into  the  mystic  conception  of  the  perfect  monad  as 
creating  the  lower  monads  by  some  sort  of  emanation  from  it- 
self. What  is  most  significant,  however,  in  Leibniz  for  our 
purpose,  is  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason  which  generically 
expressed  amounts  to  a  demand  for  reasonableness  or  logical 
coherence  in  our  world,  so  that  its  motley  variety  can  somehow 
be  stated  in  terms  of  clear  and  distinct  principles  or  denning  rela- 
tions. In  this,  we  have,  indeed,  the  essence  of  form. 

What  the  formal  constitution  of  the  universe  determines  is 
not  the  endless  variety  of  changes,  fluctuations,  and  mutations. 
These  are  due  in  part  to  the  internal,  in  part  to  the  external 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  331 

conditions  of  the  energies  of  our  world.  What  is  formally 
predetermined  is  a  certain  clearness  and  distinctness,  a  certain 
definiteness  of  type  required  of  the  fluctuations  that  appear, 
if  they  are  to  survive.  This  demand  for  clearness  and  dis- 
tinctness comes  to  consciousness  in  our  mental  organization. 
But  it  must  also  be  conceived  as  characteristic  of  the  con- 
stitution of  the  cosmos  itself  of  which  mind  is  a  part.  Only 
so  can  it  be  relevant  and  successful.  Nature  works  like  an 
artist.  While  we  cannot  predetermine  the  particular  attempts 
at  art,  we  know  that  only  those  attempts  can  survive  as  art 
which  are  clear  and  distinct. 

Powerless  indeed  is  this  form  to  create  its  special  content. 
It  cannot  work  in  vacuo.  The  grist  must  be  furnished  by  pro- 
cess. This  may  be  the  free  acts  of  willing  subjects ;  or,  lower 
down,  chance  variations,  of  the  inwardness  of  which  we  are 
ignorant.  Nor  can  the  form  arrest  the  flux,  nor  annihilate  its 
space  conditions ;  but,  within  the  process,  it  can  determine 
that  what  shall  survive  must  have  worth,  the  particular  rich- 
ness or  coloring  being  due  to  the  process  within  which  the  form 
selects.  The  universe  indeed  becomes  other  for  our  earnestness 
or  frivolity,  our  strenuousness  or  laziness.  But  this,  at  least, 
is  true :  that  what  survives  must  be  in  line  with  the  direction 
of  the  process.  The  tragedy,  moreover,  lies  not  only  in  will- 
fully missing  the  good,  but  in  intending  the  good,  and  because  of 
ignorance  of  the  complexity  of  life  and  of  the  future,  doing  the 
evil ;  the  well-meaning  man  having  to  proclaim  in  the  tragedy 
he  has  wrought :  "Das  ist  nicht  was  ich  meinte." 

Form  is  nothing,  measured  in  terms  of  the  world  of  sense-stuff, 
with  its  content  and  uniformities.  Yet  it  is  infinitely  more 
valuable  than  the  world  of  stuff.  It  can  be  no  less  real  than 
energy,  for  it  determines  its  meaning  and  direction.  It  cannot 
work  independently  of  the  finite,  but  in  the  transmutations  of 
that  which  is,  it  asserts  its  supremacy.  It  determines  the 
survival  of  the  structures  of  stuff  and  ideals.  For  our  ideals 
are  structures  striving  to  reflect  or  embody  eternally  the  in- 
finite direction.  But  their  eternity  is  only  in  the  intention ; 
their  content  is  relative. 

Form  is  eternal.  Since  form  is  not  stuff,  mind-stuff  or  any 
other  stuff,  it  is  not  subject  to  time  and  process.  Only  stuff 


332  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

is  transmutable.  Having  no  content,  not  being  itself  stuff, 
form  itself  is  not  subject  to  transformation.  The  formal  con- 
stitution which  sets  the  limit  of  process  is  not  itself  process, 
because  then  it  would  be  relative  and  cease  to  furnish  the 
direction  for  the  protean  variations  of  evolution.  It  remains 
constant  in  the  flux.  Thus  we  are  forced  to  contrast,  with 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  the  world  of  stuff  and  process  with  the 
world  of  form.  The  universe  does  not  indeed  become  pure 
form ;  the  logical  dualism  remains ;  but  pure  form  sets  the  final 
survival  conditions  of  process.  The  highest  ethical  and  reli- 
gious type  is  not  cold  form,  but  energy  molded  into  form,  and 
form  expressed  in  energy  —  the  perfect  life. 

It  has  been  supposed  by  some  that  in  order  to  insure  the 
eternity  and  reality  of  form,  we  must  have  a  static  universe. 
This  is  due  to  confused  thinking.  To  have  truth  and  worth 
in  the  universe  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  "  stoppers  of  the  uni- 
verse." But  it  is  necessary  that  the  process  shall  be  in  some 
way  selective.  As  in  the  dark,  all  cows  are  gray,  so  in  a  flux 
without  direction  there  can  be  no  valid  distinction  of  values. 
So  far  from  its  being  true  that  only  a  static  universe  guarantees 
worth,  ideals  can  have  no  meaning  in  a  static  world.  In  such 
a  world,  everything  is,  as  it  were,  dumped  together,  and  error 
and  evil,  in  so  far  as  they  exist,  have  as  much  claim  as  truth 
and  goodness.  Ideals  can  have  meaning  only  in  a  selective 
process.  Even  the  ideal  of  uniformity  can  have  meaning,  as 
Poincare*  has  shown,  only  in  a  universe  of  flux.  For  it  exists 
in  the  service  of  prediction,  and  what  prediction  could  there 
be  in  a  stillborn  world?  Flux  on  the  one  hand,  and  selective 
direction  eliminating  what  is  contrary  to  it  on  the  other,  — 
these  seem  to  be  the  necessary  postulates  in  our  world. 

With  Heraclitus  we  may  affirm  that  this  direction  is  "the 
divine  which  feeds  all  human  laws."  It  is  "the  common" 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  valid  for  all  and  binding  upon  all,  as  op- 
posed to  the  many  who  live  "as  if  they  had  a  wisdom  of  their 
own."  It  is  not  the  common  in  the  sense  of  the  identical  in  the 
many  opinions,  but  as  the  limit  in  the  historic  process.  What 
is  common  to  the  savage  and  the  civilized  man,  to  the  fool 
and  the  wise  man,  would  be  pretty  thin  and  meaningless.  On 
the  contrary,  form  manifests  itself  in  the  concrete  process  of 


FORM   AND   THE   OUGHT  333 

history,  in  the  real  flux,  which  is  not  merely  a  rearranging  of 
bits  of  substance  or  mathematical  models.  It  is  no  doubt 
true  that  the  common  in  the  sense  of  the  institutional  heritage 
of  the  race  is,  on  the  whole,  the  safest  guide  of  life.  Institu- 
tionality  is  the  result  of  workability  for  the  time  being.  But  if 
the  direction  were  merely  the  common,  history  would  be  a 
mere  dead  level  without  movement  or  progress.  Its  flashes  of 
light  must  come  first  of  all  through  the  individual. 

It  is  the  0805,  "the  path,"  of  process  and  survival;  but  not 
in  the  sense  Heraclitus  meant  it,  —  an  upward  and  downward 
path,  from  fire  down  to  water  and  earth  and  up  again,  "fixed 
measures"  being  exchanged,  —  a  merely  circular  process  in 
which  nothing  really  happens.  Not  so  with  the  real  time  pro- 
cess, where  all  uniformity  or  stuff  is  relative  and  absolute 
permanency  is  merely  an  ideal  limit.  In  the  protean  guises 
of  the  process,  form  legislates.  And  while  it  cannot  stop  the 
process,  it  determines  what  can  have  meaning  and  existence 
in  the  process.  It  is  not  the  projection  of  the  ideals  of  the 
individual  or  of  the  race  at  any  time.  Nor  do  they  intention- 
ally point  to  it.  They  point  to  their  own  realization  except 
as  they  qualify  themselves :  Not  my  will,  but  the  eternal 
Ought,  the  objective  demand  for  form,  be  done;  and  in  so 
far  they  are  contentless.  The  pointing  or  direction  lies  in  the 
destiny  "which  shapes  our  ends,  rough  hew  them  how  we  will," 
not  fatalistically,  but  by  eliminating  those  free  acts  or  accidental 
variations  which  do  not  fit  its  direction.  The  formal  consti- 
tution of  the  universe,  like  the  voice  of  Socrates,  speaks  only 
in  the  negative.  Its  content  is  ever  changing  and  ever  new. 
It  is  the  direction  of  history :  and  yet  for  us  it  is  ever  born 
afresh  out  of  the  process  it  determines.  It  has  no  concrete 
being  except  as  it  is  thus  embodied  in  the  fleeting  moments.  It 
thus  furnishes  "the  way"  in  the  trackless  void  of  the  future, 
as  it  is  continually  incarnated  into  the  finite.  It  throws  the 
golden  light  of  ideals  ahead ;  and  yet  at  every  moment  it  is 
a  new,  because  finite  light,  with  a  new  color  and  radiance, 
always,  however,  determined  by  the  same  form. 

Form  is  creative,  but  it  creates  not  by  production,  but  by 
elimination.  It  is  creative  as  the  artist  is  creative,  i.e.  by 
selection.  It  is  superior  to  "essence,"  as  Plato  would  say,  i.e. 


334  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

to  concrete  truth  and  beauty  as  historic  products,  because  it 
determines  their  worth  and  survival.  It  gives  beauty  to  the 
perishing  things  of  earth.  It  is  both  the  " heavenly  pattern" 
and  the  artist.  It  is  a  real  or  ontological  factor  of  the 
world. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  Plato  in  the  Republic  and  Symposium 
did  not  mean  Idea  in  the  sense  of  meaning  or  concept,  because 
it  is  higher  than  dialectic  —  presupposed  by  all  thought  and 
worth  in  the  concrete.  Plato's  insistence  upon  the  reality  of 
the  Idea  remains  of  eternal  significance,  though  this  must  not 
be  confused  with  the  existential  class  concepts  nor  with  forces, 
as  Plato  himself  and  his  successors  sometimes  did.  What 
Plato  failed  to  see  is  that  the  Idea  can  only  create  in  a  flux 
world  and  has  no  other  content  but  the  flux.  It  is  indeed  an 
abstraction,  but  not  a  mere  ideal  abstraction.  It  intersects 
the  concrete  world  of  process.  Only  thus  could  it  give  signifi- 
cance to  process.  If  Plato  could  only  have  made  use  of  the 
conception  of  struggle  and  evolution  (already  dimly  outlined 
by  Heraclitus),  then  the  world  of  flux  and  the  Idea  of  the  Good 
could  both  have  been  accorded  their  due  reality.  He  would 
not  have  had  to  confess  failure  as  he  does  in  the  Parmenides. 

If  we  cannot  give  any  definite  content  to  the  conception 
of  absolute  direction ;  if  it  remains  for  us  merely  the  demand  for 
law  and  worth;  if,  to  use  Plato's  metaphor,  we  cannot  look 
upon  the  sun  itself,  what  is  its  child,  its  phenomenal  mani- 
festation? What  evidence  for  its  existence  in  the  finite,  struc- 
tural world  do  we  have?  As  we  have  developed  the  sense  of 
extensity  with  complex  instinctive  coordinations  to  meet 
the  reality  of  space;  as  we  have  developed  the  sense  of  dura- 
tion with  complex  structural  adjustments  for  measuring  the 
flight  of  time  process;  as  we  have  developed  the  feeling  of 
effort  to  symbolize  energy,  so  we  have  developed  the  feeling 
for  form  with  its  tendencies  and  sentiments,  and  its  sanctions 
in  social  institutions,  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  universe  upon 
us.  That,  in  the  nature  of  things,  just  because  the  process  is 
infinite,  and  because  our  ideals  are  part  of  the  process,  our  ideals 
must  be  finite,  does  not  invalidate  the  evidence  of  the  feeling 
for  ideals  so  important  for  the  race.  That,  moreover,  these 
sentiments  and  ideals  are  growing  more  essential  and  more 


FORM   AND   THE   OUGHT  335 

adequate  to  meet  the  requirements  of  life  must  strengthen  the 
faith  in  their  objective  reference. 

The  process  of  discovery  must,  in  the  case  of  form,  as  in 
the  case  of  other  aspects  of  our  world,  be  provisional  and  tenta- 
tive. It  must  come  through  the  growing  insight  of  the  in- 
dividual as  he  strives  honestly  to  master  his  data.  It  appears 
in  experience  first  of  all  as  a  personal  gift.  In  this  lies  the  trag- 
edy of  progress.  The  new  insight  runs  counter  to  the  customs 
and  thoughts  and  habits  of  the  mass.  The  self-preservative 
instinct  of  society  rises  against  it;  and  the  bearers  of  the 
new  insight  suffer  accordingly  in  the  transition  and  may  be 
sacrificed  in  the  readjustment.  But  by  its  intrinsic  superi- 
ority, its  simplicity,  and  reasonableness,  real  insight  must 
eventually  conquer  prejudice.  A  new  plateau  is  established 
in  social  evolution.  This,  in  turn,  is  broken  through  by  new 
stimuli  from  within  or  from  without  the  consolidated  group; 
and  the  equilibrium  of  custom  is  again  disturbed,  until  a  new 
adjustment  can  take  place.  While  the  human  mass  always 
retards  the  creative  individuals,  and  while  it  is  in  the  first 
instance  impressed  by  the  externals  of  prestige  and  power 
rather  than  by  merit,  the  new  insight  must  in  the  end  prove  a 
revelation  of  our  own  deeper  nature,  of  our  own  formal  con- 
stitution. 

This  is,  indeed,  as  Kant  maintained,  the  categorical  impera- 
tive. It  commands  unconditionally.  It  does  not  grow  out 
of  our  inclinations  and  impulses,  but  it  determines  the  worth  of 
these.  Its  sublimity  surpasses  the  starry  heavens,  for  the  whole 
cosmic  process  is  subject  to  it.  In  its  consciousness  we  rise 
to  meaning  and  freedom.  We  are  part  of  another  world  to 
which  the  stuff  world  is  subject.  It  is  not  the  good  will,  but 
it  determines  whether  wills  are  good  or  not.  But  just  because 
it  is  an  absolute  limit ;  because  all  our  finite  ideals  are  relative 
to  it ;  because  it  is  the  rationale  of  history  and  not  its  product, 
therefore  no  specific  content  can  be  given  to  it.  The  maxim 
of  universality  and  all  other  maxims  are  but  relative  to  it.  We 
can  only  characterize  it  in  the  most  general  terms,  and  those, 
too,  are  finite.  It  means  orderliness  and  comprehensiveness 
in  the  regulation  of  individual  as  well  as  social  life.  It  is  the 
law  that  there  shall  be  law.  Perhaps  that  is  the  safest  deter- 


336  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

mination  we  can  give,  in  terms  of  reason,  of  that  which  trans- 
cends and  determines  reason.  Its  concrete  content  must  come, 
in  every  age,  from  its  finite  setting  in  human  institutional  and 
individual  experience.  Thus  we  are  able  to  meet  our  concrete 
duties  in  our  generation. 

The  ideal  must  become  concrete  for  us,  as  Kant  saw,  by 
being  realized  in  a  kingdom  of  ends.  This  is  not  so  simple 
as  Kant  thought.  For  Kant,  every  individual  is  a  little  god  or 
absolute,  legislating  for  all  men  and  the  universe  at  large.  But, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  individual  historic  will  is  not  autonomous, 
it  must  accommodate  itself  to  the  institutional  life  of  the  race ; 
and  the  two  may  clash.  Human  beings,  even  when  they  think 
themselves  most  rational,  do  not  legislate  in  the  same  way,  and 
life  must  proceed  by  compromises.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
institutional  heritage  is  not  final.  The  individual  may  be 
wiser  than  the  institution.  But  both  are  subject  to  the  eternal 
direction  of  the  process ;  this  alone  is  an  absolute  categorical 
imperative. 

Like  the  First  Mover  of  Aristotle,  form  does  not  itself  move ; 
but  unlike  Aristotle's  " final  cause,"  it  is  not  the  cause  of  move- 
ment, but  it  determines  by  its  existence  the  direction  and  worth 
of  the  historic  process,  and  thus  accounts  for  progress.  It  is 
not  only  transcendent,  but  ever  immanent  as  part  of  the  con- 
stitution of  the  finite,  i.e.  it  is  the  meaning  we  discover  in 
the  finite,  but  more  besides.  Else  the  finite  would  have  no 
significance.  Only  thus  could  the  yearning  in  the  finite  for 
the  complete  and  whole  originate.  In  being  thus  incarnated 
ever  anew  into  human  lives  and  the  order  of  history,  it  can 
say  with  the  Christ:  "Lo,  I  am  with  you  always,  even  unto 
the  end  of  the  world."  It  is  the  Spirit  of  Truth  which  guides 
and  shall  guide  us  in  all  truth. 

This  conception  agrees  with  the  Thomistic  as  against  the 
Scotist  position.  It  holds  that  God  himself  is  determined  by 
the  norms  of  goodness  and  truth,  rather  than  that  these 
norms  are  the  arbitrary  result  of  God's  willing.  God  on  this 
theory  would  become  the  concrete,  finite,  and  individual  em- 
bodiment of  form.  We  cannot  discover  ideals  from  what  God 
wills.  If  it  were  possible  for  God  to  make  ideals  by  arbi- 
trarily willing  them,  we  should  have  to  have  some  Hermes  to 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  337 

bring  them  down ;  and  even  then,  they  would  be  merely  arbi- 
trary, not  binding  intrinsically.  It  is  through  our  ideals,  on 
the  contrary,  that  we  come  to  piece  out  the  concept  of  God,  — 
not  as  the  arbitrary  lawmaker,  but  as  the  fulfillment  of  these 
formal  conditions  of  human  nature  and  nature.  This  fulfill- 
ment is  a  dynamic  or  growing  fulfillment, — growing  in  complex- 
ity, creative  of  higher  levels  of  realization,  without  invalidating 
the  formal  constitution  which  simply  demands  to  be  fulfilled. 
This  fulfillment  does  not  exclude  but  implies  time.  It  makes, 
however,  our  values  transcend  time  just  in  so  far  as  the  ideal 
is  fulfilled.  Its  fulfillment,  even  in  aspects,  means  eternal  value. 

With  Hegel,  we  must  agree  that  history  has  cumulative 
meaning.  This  holds,  however,  in  the  long  run,  and  not  always 
in  the  sense  that  chronological  and  logical  unity  coincide.  His- 
tory is  a  real  process,  not  merely  a  system  of  logic,  a  scaffold- 
ing of  categories.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be  read  off  simply 
by  logical  implication.  History  is  real  happening  with  real 
tragedy  and  real  success.  It  might  have  a  different  content, 
and  thus  must  be  studied  empirically.  What  the  form  deter- 
mines, is  that  what  survives  in  the  cumulative  transformations 
and  chances  of  history  must  have  worth. 

With  Fichte,  we  must  agree  that  the  universe  has  a  trans- 
cendental constitution.  But  this  constitution  is  not  merely  a 
transcendental  system  of  knowledge,  a  Wissenschaftslehre,  not 
even  Fichte's,  which  he  thinks  our  free  wills  reject  to  their  own 
damnation.  The  universe  is  not  merely  an  ethical  system, 
but  an  ethical  process.  That  which  is  "overindividual,"  is  the 
direction  of  this  process;  and  we  are  not  merely  view-points 
within  a  system,  but  real  actors  determining  the  content,  and 
so  the  character  of  the  world.  How  we  will,  or  fail  to  will, 
makes  a  difference  to  what  the  ethical  process  as  a  whole  can 
realize,  and  not  merely  to  our  individual  significance  or  suicide. 

The  ethical  process  cannot  be  like  the  Buddhist  Karma,  for 
if  life  is  simply  the  causal  result  of  what  precedes,  there  can  be 
no  attainment  of  an  ideal ;  there  can  be  neither  good  nor  bad, 
but  simply  the  automatic  record  of  the  cumulative  process. 
Life  in  that  case  must  remain  imprisoned  in  the  iron  grasp  of 
the  past.  No,  causality  itself  must  be  relative.  There  must 
be  some  fluency  in  the  process.  But  most  important  of  all, 


338  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

the  criterion  must  not  be  simply  a  product  of  the  past,  but  an 
independent  attribute  in  order  that  it  may  pass  upon  causality 
and  flux  alike.  The  Karma  permits  of  no  salvation ;  no  waking 
up  from  the  evil  nightmare.  The  horrible  dream  must  go  on. 

Validity  and  Form 

The  most  fundamental  dichotomy  of  our  ultimate  attitudes 
to  the  universe  is  that  based  upon  the  reality  of  form.  The 
theories  in  regard  to  the  stuff  of  the  universe  may  be  academic 
merely.  Pragmatically,  metaphysical  materialism  and  meta- 
physical idealism  may  have  identical  outcomes.  Democritus 
and  Priestly  found  room  for  the  same  objective  values  as  Plato 
and  Fichte.  The  practical  potentialities  of  their  worlds 
were  the  same.  It  is  different  with  the  contrast  of  formal 
materialism  and  formal  idealism.  While  formal  idealism  holds 
that  form  is  somehow  inherent  in  reality,  formal  material- 
ism holds  to  the  attitude  of  brute  chance.  For  the  latter  all 
relations  are  external  relations.  In  the  theoretical  realm  this 
means  that  there  is  no  valid  reading  of  events.  There  is  only 
expediency.  In  the  practical  realm  it  means  that  might 
makes  right  whether  in  personal  or  group  relations.  Nor  must 
we  confuse  formal  materialism  with  the  concept  of  scientific 
mechanism.  The  latter  is  a  purely  provisional  attitude  for  a 
special  purpose.  It  does  not,  or  should  not,  claim  to  be  a 
final  philosophy.  It  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  an  unconscious 
mathematical  idealism.  For  formal  materialism,  meaning  and 
value  are  accidental.  Ideals  are  somehow  a  poetic  fiction,  a 
momentary  addition  to  our  world  without  intrinsic  connection 
therewith.  The  events  of  the  universe  have  no  direction. 
They  simply  happen.  And  the  sequence  is  determined  in 
every  case  by  the  external  accidents  of  the  situation.  Formal 
idealism,  on  the  other  hand,  holds  that  ideal  realization  is  not 
foreign  to  reality,  but  in  some  way  grows  out  of  its  inner 
developing  nature.  It  insists  that  there  must  be  another  and 
more  inclusive  dimension  of  reality  than  that  of  mere  natural 
sequence. 

True,  materialism  has  always  insisted  that  such  a  dimension 
is  superfluous.  But  materialism  makes  far  too  great  demands 
on  our  credulity  :  Reason  grafted  on  chaos  by  chance  variation, 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  339 

ideals  superimposed  upon  the  fortuitous  play  of  atoms  by 
accident,  and  this  the  truth,  the  absolute  truth  about  it! 
Far  saner  seems  to  me  the  attitude  expressed  by  Plato  in  the 
Meno:  "That  we  shall  be  better  and  braver  and  less  helpless 
if  we  think  we  ought  to  inquire,  than  we  should  have  been  if 
we  indulged  in  the  idle  fancy  that  there  was  no  use  in  knowing 
and  no  use  in  searching  after  what  we  know  not;  that  is  a 
theme  upon  which  I  am  ready  to  fight,  in  word  and  deed,  to 
the  utmost  of  my  power."  For  must  not  the  assumption  that 
truth  is  an  accident  prove  suicidal  to  materialism  itself,  in  so 
far  as  it  aims  to  be  a  philosophy  ?  Metaphysical  materialism, 
as  much  as  idealism,  is  founded  upon  a  faith  in  form.  Democ- 
ritus,  no  less  than  Plato,  assumes  that  the  world  is  amenable 
to  reason,  though  for  the  former  the  real  truth  is  atoms  and 
the  void,  for  the  latter  the  Idea  of  the  Good.  We  must  some- 
how provide  for  value  and  significance  in  our  world.  Else 
why  philosophize  ?  If  truth  is  an  accident,  if  the  flux  of  things 
has  no  direction,  then  truth  and  error,  virtue  and  vice  are  the 
same,  and  it  becomes  as  absurd  to  speak  of  a  materialistic 
philosophy  as  of  any  other  kind.  The  same  accident  that 
makes  ideals  can  unmake  them.  I  cannot  conceive  of  truth 
as  even  an  ideal  limit  in  such  a  world.  A  sane  cosmic  theory, 
whatever  metaphysical  stuff  it  may  assume,  must  admit  that 
under  certain  conditions  the  universe  awakens  to  the  signifi- 
cance of  truth  and  beauty,  to  the  recognition  of  form  and  mean- 
ing. For  such  are  the  facts,  whatever  be  the  stuff  of  things. 

Without  an  objective  form  or  direction,  I  do  not  see  how 
validity  can  have  any  meaning.  Such  form  is  implied  in  our 
beliefs  in  validity  and  worth.  It  is  confirmed  by  the  very 
necessity,  —  the  practical,  as  well  as  theoretical  imperative- 
ness, —  of  these  beliefs.  Since  Augustine,  it  is  a  common- 
place that  we  cannot  argue  truth  or  worth  without  assuming 
form.  What  if  some  one  denies  the  possibility  of  validity? 
In  such  a  case,  all  argument  must  stop.  One  opinion  is  no 
truer  than  another.  Such  a  skeptic  cannot  criticize  our  argu- 
ment, our  logic  or  science.  For  by  his  own  mouth,  he  stands 
convicted  that  there  is  no  false  argument.  If  we  confine  him 
in  an  insane  asylum,  he  cannot  argue  that  we  are  unreasonable, 
however  brutally  he  may  resist,  even  as  a  lion  may  resist  con- 


340  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

finement.  He  cannot  blame  our  conduct  in  so  doing.  For 
on  his  own  premises  there  is  no  right  conduct,  except  what 
prevails ;  and  we  must  be  right  if  we  prevail.  He  may  insist 
that  there  is  no  beauty,  but  he  cannot  criticize  us  for  regarding 
him  as  a  bore,  if  we  do  have  the  feeling  that  he  is  a  bore. 

Any  theory  of  the  universe,  on  the  other  hand,  which  dis- 
tinguishes degrees  of  validity,  which  holds  that  one  state  of 
conciousness  may  be  better  or  truer  than  another,  implicitly 
refers  to  a  standard,  a  measure  more  comprehensive  than  each 
individual's  momentary  feeling  or  view-point.  To  deny  this 
is  to  land  in  the  contradictory  implication  of  a  standard  more 
absolute  than  all,  unless  indeed  we  carry  our  skepticism  to  the 
extent  of  denying  the  validity  of  our  skepticism  and  so  commit 
intellectual  suicide.  We  may  lay  it  down  then  that  all  evalua- 
tion, skeptical  or  believing,  implies  a  standard,  transcending 
the  immediate  moment  and  socially  valid.  But  the  question 
remains  :  How  must  we  conceive  this  standard  ?  I  see  only  two 
possibilities  :  We  may  assume  with  the  absolute  idealist  a  com- 
plete all-comprehensive,  eternal  experience.  In  this  we  must 
even  now  be  sharers.  We  must  move  according  to  its  logical 
necessity ;  we  must  unravel  its  logical  categories ;  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  its  completeness,  we  must  realize  our  finite  frag- 
mentariness.  I  agree  with  Royce  and  his  master,  the  divine 
Plato,  that  there  can  be  no  ideal  of  relativity.  In  a  world 
where  there  is  no  other  standard  than  that  which  seems  to 
any  consciousness  for  the  moment,  any  dog-faced  baboon  or  tad- 
pole would  have  as  valid  a  claim  as  would  the  wisest  of  men. 
The  possibility  of  error  does  imply  an  objective  constitution. 
But  an  absolute  and  inclusive  experience  I  do  not  feel  compelled 
to  assume.  For  me  it  is  neither  a  logical  necessity,  nor  does 
it  answer  my  religious  demands.  If  the  universe  is  thus  com- 
plete and  perfect,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  our  consciousness  of 
fragmentariness  and  evil  could  ever  arise.  As  the  necessities 
of  our  existence  call  for  adjustment  to  a  world  in  which  change 
and  plurality  with  all  their  darkness  play  an  important  part, 
it  is  difficult  to  see  of  what  practical  use  such  a  perspicuous 
hypothesis  can  be. 

If  we  take  the  universe,  on  the  other  hand,  at  its  face  value 
and  acknowledge  it  for  what  it  is,  —  a  stream  of  processes  with 


FORM  AND   THE   OUGHT  341 

its  novelty,  failure  and  tragedy,  —  then  we  must  conceive  the 
standard  in  another  manner.  As  this  standard  is  not  con- 
stituted by  experience,  individual  or  social ;  as  it  cannot  be 
regarded  as  an  accidental  product  of  the  process,  and  yet  can- 
not be  merely  external  to  the  process,  we  must  seek  it  in  a 
form  inherent  in  the  process.  If  the  process  has  a  formal 
direction,  dictating,  not  what  can  arise,  but  what  can  survive 
within  the  process,  then  the  significance  of  the  process  as  a 
whole,  reflective  or  non-reflective,  is  guaranteed.  And  while 
we  cannot  read  off  an  absolute  truth  when  we  do  not  have  it, 
we  have  in  this  formal  constitution  a  limit  which  transcends 
our  finite  moments,  and  furnishes  the  possibility  of  evaluating 
our  finite  degrees  of  truth  and  worth.  The  limit,  as  concretely 
posited  by  us,  partakes,  indeed,  of  the  finitude  of  our  positing  ; 
but  the  consciousness  of  this  limit,  however  it  may  vary  in 
content  with  human  experience,  becomes  a  corrective  none  the 
less  for  our  comparison.  And  on  the  reality  of  the  limit  must 
depend  in  the  end  all  validity,  however  relative,  of  truth  and 
worth. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the  concept  of  validity  has  a 
real  basis  only  in  a  world  which  has  form.  If  the  process  of  the 
universe  is  merely  a  chance  affair,  no  ideals  can  be  enforced, 
or  be  binding  whether  mechanical  or  ethical.  Science  in  such 
a  world  would  have  no  guaranty  for  its  ideals  of  simplicity  and 
unity  any  more  than  ethics  for  its  ideals  of  worth.  What 
keeps  warm  the  passion  for  science  is  that  in  spite  of  the  com- 
plexity of  the  world,  growing  ever  more  apparent  in  the  course 
of  new  discoveries,  the  facts  can  be  more  and  more  sorted  under 
common  principles ;  the  Chinese  puzzle  of  a  world  does  seem  to 
indicate  that  some  parts  belong  together,  and  the  faith  in  spite 
of  failure  ever  springs  up  afresh  in  the  truth  seeker's  breast 
that  the  rest  will  yield  to  the  same  ideals. 

Radical  empiricism  is  impossible  as  an  ultimate  philosophy. 
It  is  true,  as  the  radical  empiricist  has  argued,  that  in  such  a 
world  one  postulate  is  as  valid  as  another,  —  the  ethical  pos- 
tulate is  as  valid  as  the  epistemological.  But  this  is  merely 
an  argumentum  ad  hominem.  On  radical  empiricism  no  ideal 
could  be  valid.  Such  a  theory  must  derive  the  form  from  the 
variables,  order  from  chance,  validity  from  arbitrary  agreement 


342  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

or  from  the  fiat  of  individual  will.  But  if  validity  is  made,  is 
a  matter  of  convention  merely,  what  objective  coerciveness  can 
it  exercise,  what  standard  can  it  furnish  for  the  permanency  of 
values  ?  The  difficulty  is  not  altered  by  selecting  the  race  as  the 
unit.  Certain  values  prove  permanent  and  necessary  —  not 
because  the  race  has  willed  them  —  but  because  when  the  race 
in  any  of  its  members  does  will  them  or  feel  them,  they  prove 
themselves  intrinsically  superior  or  higher ;  they  set  conditions 
of  survival  to  the  race  because  of  the  social  unity  and  coopera- 
tion thus  made  possible.  Because  the  formal  conditions  exist, 
therefore  it  becomes  advantageous  to  discover  them,  —  though 
they  are,  indeed,  already  implied  in  the  yearnings  and  aspira- 
tions which  are  a  part  of  our  nature.  There  can  be  no  made-to- 
order  validity.  This  would  be  accidental,  and  not  universal. 
It  could  not  give  us  the  concept  of  progress,  the  limit  of  finality. 
Suppose  we  try  to  conceive  our  universe  as  without  form. 
This  is  already  a  contradiction,  for  in  such  a  world  there  could  be 
no  conception,  no  law,  no  meaning.  To  conceive  is  precisely 
to  discover  form.  Such  a  chaos  must  in  so  far  as  we  can  include 
it  in  thought  at  all,  be  a  limit  derived  from  the  relative  absence 
of  form,  from  the  relative  chaos  of  values,  which  we  approximate 
in  our  inferior  universes  of  conduct  and  appreciation.  We  can 
spread  these  out  in  a  regressive  series,  and  so  reach  as  a  limit 
the  concept  of  formlessness.  Could  such  a  formless  universe 
exist  at  all?  It  is  not  our  business  to  make  universes,  but  to 
try  to  discover  the  laws  implied  in  the  constitution  of  the  world 
as  experienced.  Certain  it  is,  we  cannot  think  such  a  universe 
as  existent.  Our  mind  is  shaped  for  a  universe  of  order.  But 
while  we  cannot  conceive  a  formless  world  as  existent,  form 
and  flux  are  logically  separable.  Some  lives  are  more  formless 
than  others,  some  attempts  at  thinking  and  appreciation  more 
chaotic  than  others.  Ideals  do  fail  of  realization  for  the  time 
being  —  perhaps  some  always.  Great  personalities  are  cruci- 
fied, great  artistic  creation  goes  unnoticed,  and  is  forgotten. 
This  does  not,  however,  invalidate  the  reality  of  ideals;  and 
they  prove  themselves  when  they  become  part  of  the  current 
of  experience  again.  They  may  be  eternal,  even  though  existen- 
tially  they  do  not  for  the  time  being  prevail.  Even  though  they 
are  forgotten  for  a  time,  they  still  have  worth.  They  may  prove 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  343 

survival  conditions  in  the  sense  that  life  or  evolution  fails 
because  it  does  not  grasp  them,  fails  through  its  relative  form- 
lessness. To  have  value,  as  well  as  to  be  survival  conditions, 
they  must  be  appreciated  and  thus  willingly  or  purposefully 
conformed  to.  In  the  life  of  a  perfect  being,  the  survival 
conditions  thus  become  intrinsic.  A  perfect  being  has  life  in 
himself,  he  is  intrinsically  eternal.  And  not  only  this,  but  he 
can  opread,  or  bring  to  birth  in  others,  the  consciousness  of 
form,  and  thus  create  worth  in  others. 

Whether  the  time  process  has  always  been  conscious  of  direc- 
tion is  not  the  question.  This,  while  genetically  interesting, 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  reality  of  direction.  We  have  not 
always  been  conscious  of  space  and  time,  and  other  char- 
acteristics of  reality,  but  they  have,  none  the  less,  conditioned 
behavior  until  we  have  acquired  the  tools  for  recognizing  them. 
So  direction  must  have  existed  before  the  consciousness  of  it,  to 
give  significance  to  process  when  we  come  to  reflect;  and  for 
that  matter,  to  bring  about  reflection.  For  why  should  we 
raise  the  question  of  form?  If  there  was  a  time  when  reality 
was  conscious  of  no  meaning,  it  must  at  least  have  had  a 
definite  direction  toward  reason.  The  process  must  shoot  into 
reflection  by  a  law  or  tendency  which  reflection  in  retrospect 
can  see  to  be  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  process,  and  not  as 
a  result  of  mere  chance.  Otherwise  reason  loses  all  validity 
as  well  as  efficacy,  and  the  mechanical  ideal  becomes  merged 
with  the  rest  in  the  general  chaos. 

If  it  is  the  limit  of  an  absolute  direction  that  gives  meaning 
to  our  finite  and  fleeting  oughts,  to  our  relative  ideals,  must  not 
the  limit,  then,  be  as  real  as  the  terms  it  limits  ?  The  straight 
line  is  surely  as  real  as  the  varying  curvatures  of  which  it  is 
the  limit.  I  am  speaking  here  of  reality,  not  of  worth.  The 
straight  line  is  worth  more,  or  is  more  significant,  than  the 
multitudinous  curves,  but  that  is  not  the  question  here.  If 
we  grant  the  reality  of  our  finite  purposes,  must  we  not  grant 
also  the  reality  of  the  limit  which  conditions  their  significance ; 
which  prevents  their  being  swamped  in  absolute  relativity  or 
brute  chance?  Must  not  direction,  without  which  process  is 
unintelligible,  be  as  real  as  the  process  ?  If  it  is  helpful,  more- 
over, to  suppose  that  there  is  somehow  in  the  universe  such 


344  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

an  ideal  limit  which  regulates  worth  and  survival;  if  even 
cosmic  and  biological  evolution  seem  to  involve  such  a  direction 
to  be  intelligible ;  if,  when  it  becomes  conscious  of  itself  in 
man,  it  can  make  significant  and  legislate  to  facts  and  impulses ; 
if  truth  itself  is  more  than  an  accident,  and  it  is  not  a  decep- 
tion that  there  can  be  approximation  toward  a  whole  of  truth, 
goodness  and  beauty,  then  this  limit  cannot  be  merely  our 
fiction,  but  must  be  involved  in  the  constitution  of  the  process. 
I  cannot  see  how  the  pragmatic  conception  of  truth  can  get 
along  with  less  than  this  concept  of  absolute  direction.  If  it 
implies  that  process  is  amenable  to  purposes  and  can  be  guided 
by  purposes,  that  the  test  of  ideals  is  their  workableness,  it 
must  somehow  account  for  the  presence  and  place  of  purpose  in 
the  process.  That  the  process  is  through  and  through  reflective 
is  a  violation  of  the  pragmatic  principle  itself,  for  there  are  surely 
some  facts  which  we  need  not  and  cannot  recognize  as  purposive. 
We  seem,  therefore,  to  be  in  a  dilemma  :  Either  we  must  accept 
materialism,  that  ideals  are  accidents  and  have  no  efficacy 
in  the  process;  or  we  must  hold  with  absolute  idealism  that 
there  is  no  process,  but  that  the  universe  is  one  complete 
whole,  the  purpose  eternally  fulfilled.  In  the  former  case, 
truth  becomes  merely  an  illusion.  In  the  latter,  truth  becomes 
inaccessible,  and  the  world  as  we  have  it  is  illusion.  The  only 
way  we  can  steer  safely  between  the  Scylla  of  materialism  and 
the  Charybdis  of  static  idealism  is  by  keeping  before  our  minds 
the  concept  of  direction.  This  makes  purposive  significance 
possible  without  stopping  the  universe.  It  also  pieces  out  the 
ideal  beyond  our  finite  purposes,  instead  of  making  it  a  mere 
unaccountable  fragment  in  the  process  without  any  setting  in 
the  universe  as  a  whole. 

Form  and  Ethical  Realization 

We  estimate  the  ethical  worth  of  life  by  its  form,  its  direction. 
This  direction  must  not  be  a  mere  function  of  what  each  in- 
dividual desires.  To  make  the  satisfaction  of  impulse  its  own 
criterion  would  destroy  all  criteria.  For  impulse  is  legion,  and 
life  would  resolve  itself  into  a  chaos  of  conflicting  desires; 
into  what  seems  to  each  individual  moment.  If  satisfaction 
is  the  test  of  worth,  then  whose  satisfaction,  that  of  the  pig  or 


FORM   AND   THE   OUGHT  345 

the  man,  the  fool  or  Socrates?  The  worst  tragedy  of  all 
perhaps  is  that  some  are  satisfied  when  they  ought  not  to  be. 
The  optimism  that  the  satisfaction  of  impulse  is  a  sufficient 
standard  presupposes  a  preestablished  harmony  between  in- 
clination and  right,  the  individual  and  the  whole,  the  present 
and  the  future,  which  has  not  been  attained  and  which  can  only 
come  by  the  accommodation  of  impulse  to  a  standard  more 
objective  than  itself.  The  limit  which  in  the  end  determines 
worth  must  itself  be  independent  of  impulse.  That  definite 
lines  of  conduct  exist  must  somehow  be  due  to  it.  This  is 
real  idealism,  as  opposed  to  naturalism  under  whatever  guise, 
spiritualistic  or  materialistic.  Naturalism  makes  the  Ought 
a  mere  function  of  what  is.  On  the  contrary,  it  must  legislate 
to  that  which  is.  What  pleases  may  not  be  what  ought  to 
please,  and  if  we  indulge  in  tendencies  that  ought  not  to  please 
us,  a  standard,  objective  to  ourselves,  forced  upon  us  by  the 
cosmic  process,  must  sooner  or  later  condemn  us. 

It  has  been  held  that  the  ideal  must  be  the  outgrowth  and 
index  of  impulse ;  else  there  could  be  no  false  judgments.  But 
how  could  there  be  either  true  or  false  judgments  if  impulse  is 
its  own  criterion?  These  involve  a  reference  to  a  constitution 
beyond  impulse.  They  imply  an  objective  form.  We  must, 
of  course,  admit  that  ideals  appear  at  a  certain  stage  in  the 
biological  series ;  but  when  they  appear,  they  appear  as  leaps, 
as  new  ways  of  evaluation,  not  as  mere  products  of  the  past. 
Why  do  such  leaps  rather  than  others  prove  to  have  permanent 
significance  ?  This  must  be  because  the  universe  somehow  has 
a  direction  of  its  own.  It  is  not  accounted  for  by  mere  chance. 
If  ideals  cannot  pass  upon  impulses  unless  they  grow  out  of  them, 
they  surely  cannot  do  so  if  they  merely  grow  out  of  them.  They 
must  have  their  own  credentials.  Strange  that  thinkers  who 
ridicule  Plato  for  hypostasizing  the  Idea  of  the  Good,  which 
when  properly  understood  is  more  than  an  hypostasis,  should 
find  it  so  easy  to  hypostasize  the  mechanical  ideal  of  atoms  and 
molecules. 

To  say  with  the  Hegelians  that  the  ideal  is  already  implicit 
or  potential  in  the  impulses  must  mean  very  much  the  same 
thing,  if  it  means  anything.  That  impulses  are  good  or  bad  is 
hardly  implied  in  the  impulses.  The  question  of  worth  can 


346  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

arise  only  when  impulses  are  evaluated  according  to  an  objective 
standard.  That  the  impulsive  satisfaction  has  worth  in  the 
end  is  not  due  to  its  being  desired,  but  that  it  fits  an  objective 
constitution,  present  and  future.  This  gives  "  immortal  in- 
tent" to  the  process.  That  the  eternally  prudent  may  be 
sacrifice,  that  what  it  aims  at  cannot  as  such  survive,  can  be 
no  part  of  short-sighted  impulse. 

Hedonism,  when  sorely  pressed,  must  have  recourse  to  "on 
the  whole  and  in  the  long  run,"  not  realizing  that  it  thus 
abandons  satisfaction  or  pleasure  as  the  ultimate  standard, 
and  substitutes  a  selective  constitution.  It  is  this,  and  not  the 
mere  subjective  satisfaction  or  dissatisfaction,  which  decides 
what  structures  can  survive  and  therefore  what  pleasures  can 
survive. 

Neither  does  self-realization  furnish  a  final  standard.  Con- 
sistently stated,  it  is  simply  natural  history,  not  ethics.  Practi- 
cally, it  would  mean  the  riot  of  absolute  individualism.  Perhaps 
the  most  picturesque  statement  of  this  doctrine  is  the  speech  of 
Aristophanes  in  Plato's  "  Symposium."  The  myth  of  the  division 
of  the  double  men  and  double  women  and  the  men-women  and 
each  half  longing  for  the  other,  signifies  that  love,  or  the  yearn- 
ing of  the  soul,  means  self-completion  or  the  attaining  of  one's 
own,  the  complement  of  one's  being.  We  must  not,  however, 
neglect  the  qualitative  difference  in  selves.  There  are  many 
types  of  selves,  and  each  type  desires  its  own  fulfillment.  If 
self-realization  is  to  be  the  criterion  of  life,  what  self  is  to  be 
realized,  the  baboon  self,  the  pig  self,  or  what  sort  of  self?  If 
all  but  human  selves  are  to  be  excluded,  what  sort  of  human  self? 
Not  the  criminal  self  nor  the  insane  self,  surely  ?  Only  a  normal 
self  could  be  the  standard.  As  Plato  says :  "  He  must  be  a  wise 
man  who  is  a  measure."  But  what  is  normal? 

Psychologically  viewed,  the  ego  may  sometimes  aim  to  realize 
or  define  itself.  It  may  aim  to  realize  social  institutions.  It 
does  aim  to  realize  its  own  tendencies,  egoistic  and  social. 
But  what  determines  the  worth  of  the  activity  is  not  the  mere 
realization  of  tendencies,  but  its  conformity  to  the  ideals  of 
the  race  and  ultimately  to  the  direction  of  history.  Perhaps 
such  a  self  has  no  business  to  be.  Its  whole  universe  or  per- 
spective may  be  sordid  and  mean,  its  complement  brutal.  In 


FORM  AND  THE   OUGHT  347 

that  case,  the  ethical  process  is  not  self-realization,  but  the 
elimination  of  that  type  of  ego.  The  doctrine  of  self-realiza- 
tion, tacitly  at  least,  assumes  a  preestablished  harmony  between 
the  ideals  of  the  individual  and  the  whole,  or  that  if  each  one 
desires  his  own  realization  he  at  the  same  time  desires  the  good 
of  the  whole.  Such  a  fallacy  could  only  be  maintained  by  such 
ambiguous  shiftings  as  that  between  the  real  good  as  opposed 
to  the  apparent,  the  true  to  the  actual,  the  eternal  to  the  tem- 
poral, in  all  of  which  it  takes  no  great  insight  to  see  that  there 
is  a  reference  to  a  constitution  beyond  the  individual  ego. 

Biologically,  self-realization  can  hardly  be  seriously  main- 
tained as  a  final  standard.  We  have  become  so  constituted, 
as  a  result  of  the  demands  of  the  universe  upon  us,  that  we  re- 
spond in  certain  ways.  To  look  out  for  ourselves  is  only  one  of 
the  many  demands  that  are  made  upon  us.  Our  adjustment 
in  the  nature  of  things  is  largely  institutional,  and  must  become 
more  so,  as  a  result  both  of  biological  and  social  heredity.  To 
fit  into  institutions,  present  and  future,  must  therefore  be  the 
biological  test  of  an  ego  worth  preserving.  The  test  in  the  end  is 
extra-individual.  And  as  institutions  are  also  subject  to  the 
law  of  survival,  the  test  becomes  extra-institutional  as  well.  It 
again  implies  the  attribute  of  direction.  A  man,  moreover, 
who  should  be  as  self-conscious  as  the  self-realization  theory 
demands  would  be  a  pretty  sickly  sort  of  specimen.  Not  self- 
completion,  but  the  yearning  for  an  objective  Good,  to  refer 
to  Plato  again,  is  true  realization. 

The  fallacy  of  the  doctrine  of  self-realization,  in  spite  of  much 
that  is  noble  in  its  appeal,  is  that  it  takes  human  nature  as  an 
absolute  entity.  The  fact  is  that  human  nature  is  essentially 
in  the  making,  and  that  it  differs  in  quality  in  different  individ- 
uals, and  at  different  stages  of  development.  Primitive  man, 
so  far  from  being  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  was  not  much 
above  the  brutes.  The  finer  instincts  and  emotions  have  devel- 
oped by  degrees  through  social  selection.  And  the  process  of 
making  man  in  the  image  of  God,  shaped  to  live  with  his  kind 
in  justice  and  love,  is  still  going  on,  and  must  go  on  for  countless 
ages.  There  are  a  few  individuals  of  exceptional  nobleness  of 
quality,  whose  realization  seems  supremely  worth  while ;  these  are 
prophetic  of  humanity  to  come,  and  their  greatness  lies  in  divin- 


348  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

ing  and  incarnating  the  universal  of  the  race.  True  realization 
must  mean  a  better  social  order,  an  improved  humanity,  a 
higher  type  of  personality.  It  cannot  be  written  in  merely  ego- 
centric terms,  but  has  its  base  in  a  progressive  humanity,  and 
in  the  cosmic  order  of  which  humanity  is  a  part.  It  is  here  that 
the  standard  must  be  found  in  the  last  analysis.  Impelled  by 
a  faith  which  we  can  but  dimly  understand  —  a  faith  which  has 
led  the  race  through  a  long  past  in  search  of  the  promise  —  we 
must  be  willing  to  risk  and  sacrifice  for  this  greater  humanity, 
whatever  may  be  our  personal  fortunes.  Out  of  such  stuff  is 
progress  made. 

Since  Spencer's  time  it  has  been  fashionable  to  speak  of 
ideal  activity  as  adjustment.  It  is  not  always  clear  what  the 
adjustment  is  to.  It  must  be  to  some  sort  of  environment. 
But  what  is  the  environment  to  which  the  soul  must  adjust 
itself  ?  It  is  not  merely  present  sense-perceptions,  surely.  The 
adjustment  must  be  to  the  future  as  well  as  to  the  present.  It 
must  be  capable  of  being  taken  up  into  the  cumulative  move- 
ment of  history.  The  present  ideal  attitudes  must  fit  into  the 
future  process  of  life.  To  hold  that  the  ideal  is  at  each  stage 
of  the  process  a  mere  function  of  the  is,  the  result  of  the  acci- 
dental shooting  together  of  the  various  tendencies  of  human 
nature,  and  also  hold  that  it  has  the  right  to  control  and  evaluate 
these  tendencies,  is  even  more  incredible  than  the  materialistic 
statement  that  the  ideal  is  a  mere  epiphenomenon,  irrelevant 
to  the  going  on  of  the  real  process.  But  the  latter  bankrupts 
all  truth  seeking  and  all  ideal  endeavor.  Epiphenomenon  is 
after  all  only  a  technical  name  for  a  lie.  Why  should  the  pro- 
cess produce  something  which  does  not  express  its  real  nature, 
has  nothing  to  do  with  its  existence,  an  unaccountable  illusion  ? 

Neither  can  we  find  a  final  standard,  as  some  maintain,  in 
the  consensus  of  likes  and  dislikes.  It  is  true  that  the  most 
important  part  of  the  adjustment  of  civilized  man  is  to  the 
institutional  ideals  and  customs  of  the  race.  These  furnish  a 
provisional  measuring  rod  for  individual  life.  But  social  agree- 
ment, while  on  the  whole  a  safer  test  than  individual  desire, 
is  not  absolute.  Can  any  thinking  man  be  satisfied  in  merely 
obeying  the  oracle  of  Delphi,  "to  worship  the  gods  according 
to  the  laws  of  the  land"?  Socrates  may  have  meant  to  do  so, 


FORM  AND   THE   OUGHT  349 

but  the  Athenians  were  right,  that  he  introduced  strange  gods, 
—  new  ideals  hostile  to  their  conventions.  Every  institutional 
embodiment  of  form  is  relative. 

Nor  can  individual  reason  furnish  an  absolute  criterion, 
however  important  in  recognizing  the  relativity  of  our  concrete 
ideals  and  the  need  of  a  standard.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the 
individual  is  wiser  than  society.  Else  there  could  be  no  prog- 
ress. As  Heraclitus  says :  "  It  is  the  law,  too,  that  we  obey 
the  counsel  of  one."  But  individual  reason  at  best  is  dependent 
upon  its  historic  setting.  It  is  limited  by  the  axioms  of  its 
immediate  social  nexus,  the  ideals  and  sentiments  of  the  age. 
It  finds  that  reasonable  to  which  it  is  accustomed.  It  easily 
finds  arguments  for  the  stake  or  the  golden  rule,  the  Inquisition 
or  the  French  Revolution,  according  to  its  setting.  An  appeal 
to  pure  reason  cannot  lift  us  above  the  relativity  of  history. 
The  rational  self  like  "the  economic  man"  or  "the  average 
individual"  is  a  convenient  fiction.  At  most,  it  is  an  ideal  limit 
to  which  we  can  give  a  general  form,  but  no  content.  If  it 
exists  now,  it  must  dip  in,  like  Emerson's  Oversoul,  from  a 
superindividual  sphere.  It  if  does  so  infiltrate  under  favorable 
conditions,  it  can  only  be  apprehended  in  terms  of  our  concrete 
experience,  and  so  the  apprehension  of  it  becomes  finite  and 
relative.  It  is  not  a  separate  compartment  in  our  mundane 
self,  "unspotted  from  the  world." 

Even  if  there  is  a  more  comprehensive  reason  than  human 
reason ;  granting  that  such  a  reason  can  know  the  total  object 
of  science,  the  present  constitution  of  things,  with  its  laws  and 
uniformities,  in  a  real  time  world  such  as  ours,  such  a  reason 
is  limited.  It  could  not,  except  hypothetically,  read  off  the 
future.  Its  attitudes  toward  the  future  must  be  pragmatic 
postulates;  and  nothing  would  seem  more  certain  than  the 
transformation  of  present  values.  Even  such  a  reason  would 
presuppose  direction,  beside  present  omniscience  for  the  validity 
of  its  judgments.  Its  judgments  would  have  to  fit  into  the 
future,  as  well  as  into  the  present,  to  be  absolutely  true.  How 
much  more  evident  must  it  be  that  our  reason  does  not  constitute 
its  own  world,  present  and  future!  We  cannot  now  be  said 
to  mean  what  we  do  not  mean ;  and  when  a  richer  meaning 
supplants  the  poorer  and  more  selfish,  that  is  not  because  we 


350  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

meant  more  than  we  meant  or  because  we  wanted  failure  when 
we  sought  success.  Paradoxes  do  not  explain.  We  must  take 
account  of  the  creative  aspect  of  the  process.  In  the  process 
as  we  become  more  deeply  conscious  of  its  formal  demands, 
the  superficiality  of  our  former  insights  comes  to  light.  If  we 
learn  modesty  in  regard  to  truth  as  we  have  it,  that  is  not  be- 
cause we  know  more  than  we  know,  or  possess  an  absolute  truth, 
but  because  we  have  learned  from  the  past  that  our  truth, 
however  satisfying  for  the  time,  is  provisional.  There  is  a 
constitution  which  transcends  our  purposes,  whether  individ- 
ual or  social.  This  selects  or  eliminates  in  the  course  of  the 
process. 

Evolution  and  Direction 

A  generation  ago,  in  the  first  enthusiasm  of  Darwin's  dis- 
covery, evolution  seemed  the  magic  key  to  all  mysteries.  But 
the  criterion  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  has  meaning  only 
when  we  define  what  environment  is  intended.  Otherwise  it 
amounts  merely  to  saying  that  what  does  survive  is  fit.  If 
we  mean  by  fitness,  conformity  to  a  temporary  environment, 
then  it  may  indeed  happen  that  under  certain  conditions,  the 
inferior  is  better  adapted  to  survive.  The  hostile  micro- 
organisms which  get  the  better  of  us  in  disease  and  death  would 
thus  prove  themselves  our  superiors. 

Evolution,  therefore,  must  derive  its  meaning  from  the  con- 
ception of  direction.  Even  such  fragmentary  cumulation  of 
significance,  as  we  find,  would  otherwise  be  meaningless,  for  we 
could  have  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  later  is  any  better 
or  truer  than  the  earlier,  even  on  the  whole  and  in  the  long 
run,  or  that  the  process  ought  to  be  read  one  way  rather  than 
the  other,  unless  we  assume  such  a  cumulative  direction.  This 
is  the  real  measure  of  the  process.  The  prerational  stages 
of  the  process,  whether  individual  or  racial,  cosmic  or  human, 
would  be  irrelevant  to  reason  unless  they  somehow  prefigured 
or  were  prophetic  of  reason,  i.e.  unless  they  had  form.  That 
there  shall  be  reason  cannot  be  an  accident,  if  we  can  reason 
about  things.  When  at  last  man  awakes  from  the  long  slumber 
of  the  ages,  pregnant  with  tendencies  which  ages  of  selection 
have  forced  upon  him  independently  of  his  individual  will,  "he 


FORM  AND   THE   OUGHT  351 

lays  his  hand  on  his  bosom  and  feels  it  is  warm  with  a  flame 
out  of  heaven " —  a  yearning  for  that  which,  for  our  present 
consciousness,  is  not  and  yet  gives  meaning  and  value  to  that 
which  is.  It  is  this  which  makes  the  time  process  ever  mean  more 
than  it  knows  —  not  its  wisdom,  but  rather  that  in  spite  of 
its  blindness  it  comes  to  fit  into  a  larger  pattern.  This  makes 
the  present,  in  so  far  as  it  is  meaningful,  fulfill  the  past  in  so 
far  as  it  has  form ;  and  as  the  checkered  web  of  the  time  pro- 
cess emerges  out  of  its  instinctive  darkness  into  the  future, 
this  formal  constitution  furnishes  the  warp  which  insures  a 
unified  whole. 

This  form  or  direction  is  not  originated  with  reflection. 
Reflection  cannot  create  this  demand  for  meaning  and  unity, 
for  it  presupposes  this  very  demand.  It  is  not  a  will  attitude. 
If  it  were,  it  would  be  subject  to  the  law  of  change,  and  so  could 
not  furnish  the  absolute  limit  of  our  striving.  It  is  not  the 
result  of  experience,  because  experience  only  comes  to  have 
meaning  and  value  with  reference  to  it.  Neither  can  time 
create  it,  for  time  has  no  direction,  knows  no  ideal.  It  can 
but  transmute  endlessly  that  which  is,  each  after  its  kind. 
What  shall  survive,  if  anything  but  chaos,  must  be  left  to 
another  principle.  For  "time,"  as  Heraclitus  has  so  strikingly 
put  it,  "is  a  child  playing  draughts."  In  the  flux  of  process, 
individual  desire  and  social  institutions,  intuition  and  reflec- 
tion, prove  alike  relative.  What  remains  is  only  the  direction. 
This  must  be  real,  else  there  is  no  meaning.  This  is  the  onto- 
logical  limit  of  truth  and  worth,  forced  upon  the  individual  by 
the  constitution  of  reality  and  the  necessities  of  life,  not  a 
mere  ideal  positing.  Provisionally,  we  may  regard  our  demands 
for  meaning  and  worth  as  biological  categories.  They  do  appear 
in  the  evolutionary  process.  They  are  involved  in  race  ex- 
perience, and  have  been  forced  upon  us  by  race  survival.  But 
this  only  pushes  the  question  back.  Why  are  they  conditions 
of  race  survival?  For  we  must  look  at  these  conditions  not 
only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual,  but  of  the  whole 
process.  They  must  somehow  be  involved  in  the  formal 
constitution  of  reality  throughout  the  time  process,  thus  to 
condition  reflection  and  life  alike.  They  are  the  manifestations 
or  incarnations  in  history  of  that  eternal  form,  which  is  with 


352  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

us  always  from  nebula  to  society,  for  even  the  astronomer 
and  the  geologist  insist  that  their  facts  are  amenable  to  cate- 
gories of  form. 

If  you  ask  how  such  a  formal  constitution  can  condition  the 
process  of  evolution,  and  yet  not  be  energy,  I  would  point  out 
on  the  one  hand,  that  if  we  must  assume  such  a  constitution  in 
order  to  make  experience  intelligible,  then  it  must  exist.  And, 
on  the  other  hand,  I  would  point  to  other  attributes  of  reality 
which,  though  not  energy,  do  definitely  condition  the  world 
of  energetic  reactions.  Such  an  attribute  for  example  we  have 
found  pure  space  to  be  with  its  condition  of  distance.  We  have 
exaggerated  the  importance  of  causal  or  quantitative  determina- 
tions. We  are  familiar  in  human  experience  with  other  types 
of  determination,  logical,  ethical,  and  aesthetic,  which  are  more 
fundamental  for  human  relations.  The  brute  force  of  an  in- 
dividual or  a  group  is  less  essential  to  social  survival  than 
teleological  fitness,  the  capacity  for  organization.  And  in 
the  cosmic  process,  in  the  large,  formal  determination  may  be 
more  essential  to  the  survival  of  structures  than  brute  quantity. 
But  if  form  is  not  a  cause,  how  can  it  make  a  difference  to  our 
world  of  process  ?  We  may  find  hints  in  our  own  social  evolu- 
tion of  how  form  may  become  efficacious.  It  is  not  the  vocifer- 
ousness  of  the  argument  or  the  quantitative  mass  of  the  art 
work  that  makes  them  prevail  in  our  human  experience.  What 
makes  them  win  us  over  and  determine  our  conduct  and  appre- 
ciation is  that  they  fit  into  the  formal  requirements  of  our 
mental  constitution  and  bring  this  into  clearer  relief.  The 
survival  of  man,  or  at  least  his  standing  in  organized  society, 
consists  in  adopting  or  imitating  certain  forms,  certain  types 
of  conduct  —  conventional,  legal,  ethical,  religious,  etc.  The 
forms  as  such  have  no  causal  efficacy.  Their  efficacy  comes 
from  their  coerciveness  upon  the  will  of  the  group.  In  imitating 
them,  the  member  of  the  group  survives,  so  far  as  the  special 
demands  of  that  group  are  concerned.  A  whole  group,  again, 
may  be  destroyed  by  another  group  which  has  a  superior  or- 
ganization. Form  thus  figures  as  an  aspect  of  efficient  action, 
though  it  is  not  as  an  abstraction  efficacious.  We  strive  for 
it  because  it  is  implied  in  our  structure. 

While  it  is  not  necessary  that  the  producer,  be  he  artist, 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  353 

scientist,  or  reformer,  be  explicitly  conscious  of  form,  yet  the 
critic  in  examining  his  work  can  see  that  such  formal  demands 
are  realized.  The  creative  result  is  approved,  whether  by 
contemporaries  or  by  posterity,  not  because  of  the  mechanical 
tools  employed  or  the  psychological  attitude  of  the  particular 
producer  or  spectator,  but  because  they  conform  to  the  formal 
postulates,  which  the  producer  imitated  or  brought  to  expression. 
We  do  not  ask:  Was  the  producer  conscious  of  the  form? 
We  only  ask :  Does  the  result  conform  ?  The  formal  survival 
has  to  do,  not  with  the  method  of  production,  but  with  the 
acceptability  of  the  unities  produced.  If  they  fail  to  get  the 
approval  of  the  race,  they  may  perhaps  survive  as  raw  material 
for  fresh  attempts,  as  Ibsen's  button  molder  proposes  to  melt 
up  worthless  human  life  in  his  ladle,  but  they  cannot  persist 
as  formal  unities,  whether  science,  art,  or  social  institutions. 

If  there  is  in  the  universe  a  perfect  Socius,  an  omniscient 
selective  activity,  with  power  commensurate  with  his  formal 
demands,  then  we  can  see  how  in  nature  and  the  universe  at 
large,  as  well  as  in  race  history,  form  can  be  a  category  of  sur- 
vival. As  forms,  only  those  unities  would  survive,  in  the  long 
run  of  his  patience,  which  he  approves.  Such  a  being  would 
guarantee  that  universal  efficacy  of  form  in  the  cosmos  which 
we  implicitly  postulate.  Thus  the  universe,  while,  in  the 
concrete  and  actual,  it  cannot  be  said  to  be  a  whole,  would  be 
guaranteed  potentially  as  a  whole,  or  at  any  rate  wholes  would 
be  guaranteed  within  it;  for  only  certain  organizations  of 
energy  would  prevail  as  acceptable.  The  values  which  we 
imply  in  all  our  idealizing  activity,  logical,  aesthetic,  ethical, 
could  be  potentially  or  virtually  guaranteed  even  now,  for  only 
those  structures  which  imitate,  or  are  in  the  direction  of,  this 
selective  activity  would  survive. 

Whatever  may  be  the  coerciveness  of  such  a  faith,  it  is  a  fact 
that  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  architecture  or  form  must  be  taken 
account  of  as  a  condition  of  stability  or  instability  in  the  world 
as  we  know  it.  In  the  case  of  chemical  compounds,  some  pro- 
portions of  elements  are  stable,  some  are  unstable.  Hydrogen 
and  oxygen  have  a  high  degree  of  stability  in  the  combining 
relation  of  water,  while  in  other  proportions  they  enter  into  the 
most  unstable  of  compounds.  The  difference  here  is  not  in  the 


354  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

elements  themselves,  but  in  the  numerical  ratio,  which,  therefore, 
must  be  regarded  as  a  factor.  Even  more  striking  is  nature's 
respect  for  architecture  in  the  case  of  organic  structures. 
Mendel's  law  shows  how  jealous  nature  is  of  the  preservation 
of  the  type.  Cross-breeding  of  types  either  leads  to  sterility, 
where  the  types  constitute  remote  species ;  or  where  they  are 
less  variant,  leads  to  segregation  of  the  original  characters  thus 
blended  and  the  reestablishing  of  the  original  types.  Thus 
nature  enforces  a  certain  simplicity  of  form  where  otherwise 
would  exist  endless  chaos.  The  same  tendency  might  be  illus- 
trated in  the  history  of  ideal  activity,  as  in  the  aesthetic  and 
institutional  structures  of  the  race,  where  again  definite  types 
tend  to  prevail,  giving  direction  to  what  would  otherwise  be 
promiscuous  individual  variations. 

The  world  of  change  and  external  contiguity  can  to  a  degree, 
even  in  our  finite  selective  activity,  be  taken  up  into  contexts 
of  meaning  and  validity.  This  process  of  taking  over  the 
brute  world,  with  its  mechanical  uniformities,  is  going  on  in 
science,  art,  and  institutions  with  their  selective  survival 
conditions,  however  limited  may  be  the  results.  That  such  a 
selection  is  a  fact,  a  normal  fact  of  the  functioning  of  the 
universe,  and  that  it  points  to  a  formal  constitution  of  which 
we  must  become  conscious  and  which  individual  insight  must 
seize  upon,  if  it  would  be  immortal,  we  also  realize  from  human 
experience.  No  human  convention  can  make  a  poem  or  a 
painting  immortal.  It  must  be  such  intrinsically  by  antici- 
pating the  universal,  which  social  and  individual  experience 
alike  must  acknowledge.  It  must  be  true  to  a  form  which 
eternally  exists,  unmoved  by  change,  in  order  to  constitute  worth 
and  eternity  within  change.  Such  a  constitution  must  have 
been  ever  operative,  or  it  could  not  be  operative  now.  As 
formal  selection  is  genuinely  effective  in  the  case  of  one  part  of 
reality,  it  cannot  be  an  accident,  but  must  be  regarded  as  an 
expression  of  the  universe.  And  why  should  we  suppose  that 
the  form  waits  on  human  wills  alone  for  being  operative?  Is 
it  not  easier  to  suppose  that  somehow  this  formal  selection  is 
always  going  on  in  the  cosmos,  subjecting  the  thing-order  to 
the  order  of  ideals,  and  that  our  acknowledgment  and  our 
significant  activity  is  prepared  for  and  a  part  of  this  cosmic 


FORM   AND   THE    OUGHT  355 

selection?    Why  should  we  not  trust  our  faith  in  the  formal 
categories  as  we  trust  our  faith  in  the  mechanical? 

The  One  and  The  Many 

The  perennial  problem  of  the  one  and  the  many  finds  its 
only  intelligible  solution  in  the  recognition  of  such  a  direction. 
The  dialectic  as  to  whether  the  universe  is  really  one,  and  the 
many  an  illusion  —  or  whether  it  is  really  many,  and  the  unity 
an  illusion  —  has  been  waged  long,  though  usually  with  blood- 
less damage  to  both  sides.  The  atomists  of  all  types,  whether 
believers  in  the  quantitative  entities  of  Democritus,  or  in  the 
spiritual  monads  of  Leibniz  or  the  qualities  of  Herbart,  have 
found  it  necessary  to  account  for  the  apparent  unity  as  arbi- 
trary and  seeming.  The  monists  again,  from  Parmenides  down, 
have  been  equally  forced  to  sacrifice  the  apparent  plurality 
within  the  world.  Brave  souls  who  have  had  more  respect  for 
the  facts  than  for  logical  consistency  have  compromised  and 
admitted  both  the  one  and  the  many  with  varying  emphasis 
according  to  their  peculiar  bias.  One  thing  is  certain,  that 
on  the  basis  of  a  static  conception  of  the  world,  the  problem  of 
the  one  and  the  many  remains  as  impossible  as  ever. 

Nor  is  a  dynamic  conception  of  the  world  by  itself  any  more 
satisfactory.  That  the  universe  is  process  or  transformation 
does  not  tell  us  anything  about  its  relative  unity  or  plurality. 
Process  in  itself  may  mean  greater  chaos  as  well  as  greater  unity. 
It  furnishes  no  guaranty  one  way  or  the  other.  It  tells  us 
nothing  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  mere  time  process  about  its  whither. 
Still  we  insist  that  our  world  shall  be  a  whole  and  not  a  mere 
chaos.  This  is  the  eternal  inspiration  of  scientific  research 
as  well  as  of  practical  life.  Yet  how  ridiculously  meager  is 
the  evidence  for  our  faith.  Kleinpeter  tells  us  that  his  master, 
Mach,  proceeds  inductively  as  regards  this  unity,  while 
philosophy  proceeds  deductively.  Have  the  fair  maiden's 
dreams  of  love,  and  her  golden  hair  flying  in  the  breeze,  and  the 
prairie  zephyrs  all  been  comprehended  within  one  inductive 
unity?  That  they  ever  will  be  so  is  an  audacious  dream. 

We  are  agreeing  now  that  if  there  is  to  be  unity  it  must 
be  a  teleological  unity.  The  dust  storm  can  be  understood 
as  one  with  love's  fair  dream  only  when  they  can  be  seen  as 


356  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

part  of  one  converging  purpose.  Plato  felt  his  way  toward 
such  a  teleological  unity  when  he  crowned  his  hierarchy  of 
Ideas  with  the  Idea  of  the  Good.  But  the  dynamic  cement 
of  process  was  lacking,  and  the  loose  stones  would  not  hold 
together.  If  we  assume  the  attribute  of  direction,  it  seems  to 
me  we  shall  have  the  necessary  regulative  principle.  Granting, 
on  the  one  hand,  a  universe  of  flux  with  ever  new  variations, 
and,  on  the  other,  an  objective  form,  selective  or  legislative  to 
this  flux,  in  eliminating  those  transmutations  which  do  not  fit 
its  direction  —  granting  this  not  only  as  an  experiential,  but 
as  a  cosmic  principle,  and  a  degree  of  unity  at  any  one  time 
would  be  guaranteed,  and  in  the  long  run,  the  successive  stages 
of  the  process  would  show  cumulative  significance,  with  a 
backward  and  a  forward  reference.  Such  a  universe,  too,  with 
its  original  diversity  of  stuff  to  be  transformed,  with  the  possi- 
bility of  ever  fresh  variations,  not  precluded  by  such  unifor- 
mity as  exists  in  the  transmutations  —  such  a  universe  would 
also  account  for  the  outstanding  plurality  and  opaqueness 
in  any  given  stage  of  the  process.  And  as  the  process,  more- 
over, is  as  eternal  as  the  direction,  the  pluralism  could  not 
disappear,  though  it  might  grow  more  articulate  here  and  there, 
and  so  make  disjunctive  judgments  of  the  future  more  possible. 
The  conception  of  immortality  as  the  persistence  of  individual 
unity,  can  be  given  real  meaning  only  if  we  assume  the  attribute 
of  direction.  Mere  existence,  and  the  tendency  to  persist  in 
esse  suo  cannot  guarantee  immortality.  The  question  is  not, 
does  an  individual  desire  to  persist  ?  Or  does  he  have  a  specific 
content?  But  is  he  worthy  to  persist?  Is  the  content  sig- 
nificant? In  the  history  of  art  and  institutions,  as  well  as  in 
the  history  of  thought,  we  learn  that  only  those  structures  and 
contents  which  fit  into  the  future  of  the  process  can  survive. 
But  if  worth  is  to  be  a  condition  of  survival,  the  process  must 
be  fundamentally  selective.  It  must  have  direction. 

The  Ought 

We  may  define  the  Ought  as  the  consciousness  of  the  form- 
character  of  the  universe.  As  the  chord  in  music  has  its  form ; 
and  as  each  movement  of  the  symphony,  as  well  as  the  sym- 
phony as  a  whole,  has  its  form,  so  we  may  think  of  the  total 


FORM  AND   THE   OUGHT  357 

movement  of  cosmic  evolution  as  having  its  unique  form,  giving 
direction  and  unity  in  the  large,  to  its  totality  of  interlocking 
parts.  It  is  the  law  of  the  whole  of  which  we  finite  parts  be- 
come gradually  conscious  in  our  ideal  activity,  as  we  strive 
to  understand  and  to  appreciate  the  world  of  which  we  are  the 
more  or  less  articulate  expression.  In  our  imperfect  finite 
development,  this  law  of  the  whole,  as  striven  for  by  our  will, 
must  necessarily  appear  as  an  Ought. 

For  purely  theoretical  purposes,  a  constitution  which  should 
select  automatically  and  unconsciously  on  the  basis  of  form, 
might  catisfy  our  requirements.  That  such  cosmic  selection 
is  going  on,  is  shown  by  the  very  fact  that  reason  is  at  home 
in  the  world,  and  that  laws  can  be  formulated  in  a  world  of 
flux.  For  ethical  and  religious  purposes,  however,  we  seem  to 
require  more  than  an  automatic  constitution.  We  need  the 
sense  of  comradeship,  the  sympathetic  participation  by  the 
larger  world  in  our  fleeting  and  disproportionate  striving.  We 
need  to  feel,  not  only  that  the  universe  enforces  an  impersonal 
order,  but  that,  somehow,  a  power  greater  than  ourselves, 
and  representing  the  more  of  our  best,  helps  us  to  realize  our 
creative  destiny.1  Just  because  reality  is  characterized  by 
change,  and  is  in  some  degree  plastic,  it  becomes  possible  con- 
sciously so  to  direct  this  transformation,  whether  as  regards 
our  individual  or  our  collective  lives,  as  to  meliorate  the  past, 
and  atone  in  part  for  its  failures.  And  because  the  process  is 
cumulative,  and  our  imperfect  efforts  must  enter  into  the 
creative  process  of  the  future,  and  there  find  their  correction 
and  supplementation,  it  becomes  possible  to  approximate 
in  the  historic  process  towards  a  more  perfectly  realized  form. 
This,  moreover,  our  religious  faith  makes  real  to  us  as  a  present 
companionship  with  a  perfect  Socius,  stimulating  our  best  and 
atoning  in  some  measure,  through  its  regenerative  influence, 
for  our  worst.  Such  a  being  makes  real  and  concrete  to  our 
imagination  and  emotion  the  objectivity  of  the  Ought. 

The  faith  in  such  a  selective  process  furnishes  a  sufficient 
guarantee  for  our  ideal  striving.  This  is  not  a  mere  Utopian 
or  laissez  faire  optimism.  There  is  real  evil  in  the  world,  real 
maladjustments,  false  viewpoints.  But  though  the  wicked 

1  See  "The  Function  of  Religion,"  the  Biblical  World,  August,  1915. 


358  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

flourish  like  a  green  bay  tree,  their  type  shall  not  prevail. 
The  servant  of  Jehovah  shall  eventually  triumph,  though  per- 
haps through  labor  and  suffering.  The  righteous  remnant 
shall  survive  and  inherit  the  kingdom.  Only  the  just  state  can 
maintain  itself.  And  because  the  mills  of  the  gods  grind 
exceeding  fine,  though  perhaps  slowly,  we  can  afford  to  be 
tolerant,  and  to  wait.  "Let  the  tares  grow  with  the  wheat 
until  the  harvest."  And  the  harvest  is  the  sifting  by  the  pro- 
gressive process  itself.  In  view  of  our  ignorance  of  the  future, 
our  motto,  just  as  far  as  our  decent  living  together  permits, 
should  be :  Judge  not.  Let  it  be.  The  divine  direction  of 
history  will  see  to  it,  in  the  struggle  of  ideals,  that  the  superficial 
and  ephemeral  are  eliminated.  Thus  man  can  labor  and  wait  with 
confidence  as  regards  the  final  outcome.  And  if  he  is  made  of 
the  right  kind  of  stuff,  he  will  be  willing  to  have  his  own  ideals, 
yea,  even  himself,  eliminated  if  unworthy  to  survive.  In  this 
willingness,  at  least,  he  will  prove  his  superiority  to  chance. 

Will  the  kingdom-not-of-this-world  and  the  kingdom-of- 
this-world  ever  be  one;  will  stuff  and  form,  the  traveler  and 
the  path,  ever  blend  into  one  unity?  Will  the  third  kingdom, 
prophesied  by  Ibsen  in  his  "Emperor  and  Galilean,"  the 
kingdom  of  God-Caesar  or  Caesar-God,  ever  be  a  finished 
actuality?  Not  while  the  world  is  process.  So  long  as  there 
are  transformations,  so  long  must  the  mills  of  the  gods  grind, 
and  so  long  will  the  content  and  meaning  of  the  world  be  ever 
new.  No,  to  make  circumstance  plastic  in  the  service  of  the 
Ought  is  the  task  and  the  joy,  too,  of  life,  at  least  of  healthy 
life.  The  real  other,  the  completer  life,  is  not  an  absolute 
system  of  truth  which  we  now  possess  and  intentionally  hide 
for  the  purposes  of  the  dialectic  game;  but  the  yet  unborn, 
the  insight  we  have  not  seen.  Any  theory  which  ignores  this 
must  make  history  and  duty  a  mere  farce.  The  universe  is 
process,  but  through  the  process  the  selective  direction  sets  the 
conditions  of  survival  and  meaning. 

There  will  always  be  tired  souls,  who  want  rest  above  all 
other  things ;  but  this  must  be  a  rest  which  the  world  cannot 
give,  a  rest  in  seeking  and  realizing  the  ideal.  The  satisfaction 
we  now  seek  may  itself,  in  a  further  stage  of  the  process,  be  seen 
to  be  relative  and  unworthy.  To  stop  at  that  would  be  lazy, 


FORM  AND   THE   OUGHT  359 

cowardly,  and  immoral.  The  real  satisfaction  lies  ever  beyond 
in  the  completer  life.  Art  tries  to  steal  from  the  fleeting 
moments  their  meaning,  and  to  frame  it;  and  it  rests  us  for 
a  moment.  But  this  satisfaction,  too,  is  relative.  The  songs  of 
our  childhood  satisfy  our  soul  no  more.  The  satisfaction  of  the 
Greek  world  is  not  our  satisfaction. 

The  only  way,  finally,  which  I  can  serve  the  eternal  Ought 
is  by  serving  for  the  time  being  the  Ought  incarnated  in  my 
meaning  and  in  human  history.  To  quote  Heraclitus  again, 
"It  is  not  meet  to  act  and  speak  like  men  asleep."  We  are 
here  to  think  and  to  create.  Whether  we  are  awake  or  asleep, 
whether  we  think  or  dream  away  life,  we  are  subject  to  the  law 
of  change  and  the  law  of  direction.  But  if  we  think,  we  may 
enter  into  the  eternal  in  some  degree  by  striving  to  understand 
the  direction  of  things,  and  by  guiding  our  lives  accordingly; 
we  may  become  creators  instead  of  mere  bubbles  on  the  stream. 
By  acting  out  my  best  purposes,  by  living  my  highest  insight, 
there  shall  come,  perhaps  through  failure,  perhaps  through 
partial  success,  how  I  do  not  know,  new  insight,  new  capacity 
for  work,  love,  and  appreciation.  The  guiding  power  of  the 
universe  will  see  to  it,  if  we  are  sincere,  that  we  do  not  per- 
manently miss  the  course  in  the  foggy  unknown.  But  our 
illumination  must  be  the  Ought  as  now  incarnated  in  human 
history.  The  next  incarnation  will  come  in  the  fullness  of 
time.  The  voice  out  of  the  dark  is  enough  for  the  next  step. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM 

THE  question  about  the  whence  and  whither  of  the  drift  of 
our  cosmic  weather  is  an  old  one  and  cannot  be  lightly  brushed 
aside.  It  is  both  a  forced  and  a  momentous  issue.  It  is  a 
forced  issue  because  we  cannot  help  taking  an  attitude  towards 
it,  whether  we  make  it  explicit  to  ourselves  or  not.  It  is  momen- 
tous because  such  an  attitude  is  a  serious  index  of  our  deepest 
practical  faith  as  regards  the  value  of  life,  and  cannot  help 
determining  our  conduct.  There  have  been  three  distinct 
types  of  theory  in  the  past  as  regards  this  drift,  —  mechanism, 
finalism  and  vitalism. 

I.    Theories  of  Evolution 

Mechanism.  —  In  considering  mechanism  we  must  be  care- 
ful not  to  be  misled  by  the  name,  which  is  after  all  but  a  figure 
of  speech.  The  view  of  the  scientific  naturalist  of  to-day  has 
little  in  common  with  the  mechanical  theory  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  His  interest,  as  must  always  be  the  case  with  science, 
is  in  efficient  causes,  and  in  so  far  he  is  not  committed  to 
any  special  type  of  metaphysics.  He  is  but  trying  to  discover 
the  determining  factors  in  the  series  of  dynamic  situations 
that  occur  in  experience.  As  regards  the  constitution  of  these 
situations  he  is  not  necessarily  an  abstract  atomist.  It  is 
true  that  the  atomic  hypothesis  in  chemistry  and  Mendel's 
theory  of  unit  characters  in  biology  have  proved  highly  con- 
venient in  studying  chemical  and  biological  processes,  but 
recent  scientific  research  has  shown  that  such  an  atomism,  if 
taken  in  the  abstract,  breaks  down.  The  Mendelian  units, 
for  example,  are  not  effective  as  abstract  elements.  They  figure 
within  dynamic  situations  which  they  enable  us  to  predict. 
Sometimes  two  unit  characters  may  figure  as  one  for  the  pur- 
pose of  prediction.  In  any  case  we  must  take  account  of  the 

360 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  361 

dynamic  context  in  order  to  have  satisfactory  explanation.  This 
is  equally  true  of  other  biological  abstractions,  such  as  sex 
determinants.  They  are  only  efficient  in  the  situations  in 
which  they  figure  and  which  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore.  The 
mechanical  view,  in  the  science  of  the  present  day,  amounts  to 
this,  that  in  the  case  of  life  as  well  as  in  the  inorganic  world 
we  must  examine  the  chemical  constitution  of  the  process.  We 
must  analyze  the  dynamic  situation  into  its  chemical  factors 
and  their  positional  values.  The  effects  of  the  presence  or 
absence  of  these  factors  must  be  discovered,  their  quantitative 
variations  in  the  situations  under  experimental  control  must 
be  studied,  and  the  effects  of  external  conditions  noted.  There 
is  no  metaphysical  short  cut  to  an  understanding  of  the  pro- 
cess of  life,  any  more  than  to  an  understanding  of  other  dynamic 
processes. 

As  for  the  unique  chemical  compounds  which  pertain  to 
living  organisms,  natural  science,  accepting  them  as  facts,  as  it 
accepts  other  actual  compounds,  is  inclined  to  assume  conti- 
nuity as  between  the  organic  and  the  inorganic,  and  to  reduce 
the  difference  to  one  of  complexity.  The  chemist's  success 
in  artificially  producing  "organic"  substances  in  the  laboratory, 
—  a  success  which  has  been  ever  increasing  since  the  organic 
compound  of  urea  was  artificially  produced  a  century  or  more 
ago  —  has  stimulated  the  naturalist  to  believe  that  it  may 
hereafter  be  possible  to  produce  living  organisms  out  of  what 
we  call  inorganic  elements,  or  at  any  rate  our  failure  to  do  so 
in  the  past  may  be  due  to  our  ignorance  and  not  to  any  inherent 
absurdity  in  the  idea. 

Now  if  the  attitude  of  mechanism  be  understood  in  this 
naturalistic  sense,  nothing  can  be  said  against  its  procedure. 
Its  results  in  successsful  prediction  have  been  truly  marvel- 
ous, considering  the  short  time  for  which  the  method  has  been 
seriously  tried.  The  revising  of  special  hypotheses  must  be 
dictated  by  the  facts,  not  by  any  a  priori  objections.  Thus  it 
is  now  generally  recognized  that  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  of 
natural  selection,  epoch  making  as  it  was  and  useful  as  it  still 
is,  is  only  a  partial  account  of  the  facts.  Natural  selection  is  a 
negative  factor  in  evolution.  As  Driesch  puts  it,  to  regard 
natural  selection  "as  a  positive  factor  in  descent  would  be  to 


362  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

confound  the  sufficient  reason  for  the  non-existence  of  what  is 
not  with  the  sufficient  reason  of  what  is."  The  positive  ground 
for  variation  and  continuity  must  be  found  within  the  process. 

The  only  question  that  can  be  raised  as  to  the  mechanistic 
hypothesis  is  whether  it  is  adequate  as  an  ultimate  philosophy. 
Can  this  external  and  seemingly  blind  dynamism  account  for 
the  direction  of  the  process,  and  for  the  outcome  as  we  find  it 
in  the  higher  stages  of  life?  Can  we  read  the  whole  history  of 
the  universe  solely  in  terms  of  the  categories  which  have  proven 
so  convenient  on  the  simpler  levels  of  existence  ?  The  postulate 
of  continuity  should  apply,  it  would  seem,  as  well  when  read 
from  above  down  as  when  read  from  below  up.  And,  after  all, 
we  have  a  much  more  intimate  knowledge  of  processes  and  their 
implications  in  the  highest  stages,  of  which  our  will  and  ideals 
are  a  part,  than  we  can  ever  possess  of  the  dynamism  of  the 
lower  stages  of  nature.  In  the  former  case  we  have  a  first-hand 
acquaintance  with  the  inner  transitions  and  unities ;  in  the  latter 
we  are  at  best  outside  and  speculative  spectators. 

Finalism.  —  Finalism,  as  opposed  to  mechanism,  has  always 
taken  the  point  of  view  that  we  must  judge  evolution  by  its  out- 
come, its  last  stages.  We  know  the  potentialities  of  the  acorn 
when  we  have  seen  it  grow  up  as  the  oak,  of  the  child  when  its 
capacities  are  displayed  in  the  grown  man.  So  we  must  know 
nature  by  its  outcome  in  our  striving  for  ideals.  Under  the  theory 
of  mechanism,  the  process  is  accounted  for  by  the  factors  dis- 
coverable in  the  previous  stage  of  the  sequence,  together  with 
the  external  conditions  which  play  upon  them ;  for  finalism  the 
causality  lies  in  the  future,  in  the  prospective  value  of  the 
process. 

For  working  out  this  view  we  must  go  back  to  Plato  and 
Aristotle  as  models.  In  opposition  to  the  naturalistic  method 
of  their  day,  they  insisted  that  evolution  must  be  explained 
by  its  purpose,  the  Idea,  or  form,  to  which  it  tends.  The  two 
Greek  thinkers  differ  somewhat  in  details,  but  Plato  must  be 
regarded  as  the  original  master  of  this  type  of  view. 

For  Plato  the  world  of  sense,  the  existence  of  which  he  does 
not  deny,  is  a  poor  effort  to  copy  a  world  of  eternal  Ideas. 
These  alone  are  real.  On  this  theory  of  a  copy,  Plato  is  driven 
to  assume  that  there  are  as  many  Ideas  not  only  as  there  are 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  363 

ideals  and  class  types,  but  as  there  are  individuals  and  types 
of  relations.  This  forces  him  eventually  to.  regard  mathematics 
as  the  type  of  the  real,  since  only  here  can  he  find  ideal  possibili- 
ties adequate  to  the  originals  of  the  distorted  shadows  which 
make  up  the  phenomenal  world.  With  this  phenomenal  world 
Plato  manifests  a  poetic  impatience.  He  would  not  trouble 
himself  so  much  with  the  mechanism  of  movement,  so  im- 
portant to  Aristotle.  He  would  go  directly  to  the  end,  which 
is  the  Good.  Aristotle,  while  he  largely  copies  his  master, 
places  more  confidence  in  the  world  of  actual  process,  in  the 
potentialities  of  matter.  The  concrete  process  is  the  first 
reality.  But  this  process  finds  its  explanation  in  the  conception 
of  a  goal,  its  final  cause.  Here  shows  the  artistic  consciousness 
of  the  Greek ;  life  and  nature,  too,  work  as  the  artist.  In  either 
of  these  views  the  end  is  conceived  as  the  moving  cause.  "It 
is  the  conception  of  a  thing  which  produces  motion  alike  in  works 
of  nature  and  of  art.  Only  man  can  beget  man.  Only  the 
conception  of  health  can  determine  the  physician  in  producing 
health.  In  like  manner  we  shall  find  in  the  highest  cause  which 
is  God,  the  pure  form,  the  ultimate  end  of  the  world  and  the 
source  of  its  movement  united  in  one.'7 1 

But  obviously  the  end  cannot  be  conceived  to  be-  consciously 
present  in  the  case  of  the  lower  processes.  How  can  they  then 
develop  in  the  direction  of  their  characteristic  activities?  In 
other  words,  how  can  the  form  be  effective?  Since  God  is 
the  goal  and  the  final  cause  of  the  movement  of  the  universe, 
how  does  God  act  upon  the  world?  Here  Aristotle  wavers 
between  two  methods.  He  sometimes  speaks  in  quite  mechani- 
cal terms.  God  gives  a  push  from  without  to  the  outer  circle 
of  the  universe,  and  thus  makes  it  move.  But  the  more  char- 
acteristic method  of  Aristotle  is  to  look  upon  God  as  self-con- 
tained activity  and  bliss,  moving  the  world  by  his  perfection. 
The  beloved  does  not  need  to  do  anything  to  the  lover ;  for  the 
lover  is  moved  by  the  beauty  of  the  beloved.  So  the  universe 
moves  because  it  desires  perfection.2  This  perfection,  more- 

1  Quoted  from  Zeller,  "Aristotle,"  Vol.  I,  pp.  356,  357. 

2  In  Zeller's  paraphrase  of  Aristotle :    "  God  moves  the  world  in  this  way : 
The  object  of  desire  and  the  object  of  thought  cause  motion  without  moving 
themselves.     But  these  motive  forces  are  ultimately  the  same  (the  absolute 
object  of  thought  is  the  absolutely  desirable,  or  pure  good) ;   for  the  object  of 


364  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

over,  is  different  for  different  classes;  vegetable,  animal,  or 
human,  each  moves  to  realize  its  own  proper  function,  its 
characteristic  soul. 

Hence,  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  explain  the  diversity  of  the 
process,  to  assume  in  addition  to  God  a  multiplicity  of  forms,  — 
entelechies,  or  conceptions.  Just  what  relation  these  bear  to 
the  final  form,  God,  Aristotle  does  not  tell  us ;  he  takes  them 
for  granted  from  experience.  His  faith  in  the  concrete  process, 
however,  gives  him  the  advantage  that  he  can  regard  the  pro- 
cess itself  as  really  moving,  and  also  that  he  can  make  this 
concrete  process  bear  part  of  the  responsibility.  Thus  the 
individuality  of  the  process  is  due  not  to  its  form  but  to  its 
matter.  Hence,  forms  are  genera,  not  particulars.  Here, 
again,  his  solution  of  the  problem  is  tantalizingly  vague.  And, 
naturally,  he  has  little  to  say  about  immortality,  that  is,  the 
final  significance  of  the  individual. 

A  more  serious  question  is  why  the  process  should  desire 
the  form.  What  relation  do  the  conceptions,  or  entelechies, 
bear  to  the  process  itself  ?  If  they  did  not  exist  as  second  reali- 
ties, would  it  make  any  difference  to  the  process?  Would  not 
the  process  move  by  its  own  immanent  tendency?  In  that 
case  the  conceptions,  serving  as  final  causes,  would  seem  to  be 
after-thoughts.  But  Aristotle  is  too  anthropomorphic  to  be 
troubled  by  such  questions ;  for  him  to  the  end  it  is  the  con- 
ceptions which  move  matter,  although  "only  the  master  workers 
know  the  reason  why.  Manual  workers,  like  lifeless  things, 
work  by  habit." 

That  there  is  truth  in  the  finalist's  contention  we  shall  find 
abundant  reason  to  see.  But  the  solution  suggested  by  Plato 
and  Aristotle  is  far  too  easy  and  abstract.  A  biologist  of  the 
present  day,  Driesch,1  has  attempted  to  give  Aristotle's  view 
a  more  modern  and  scientific  statement.  Driesch  insists  that 

desire  is  apparent  beauty,  while  the  original  object  of  will  is  real  beauty,  but 
desire  is  conditioned  by  the  notion  (of  the  value  of  the  object)  and  not  vice  versa. 
Thought,  therefore,  is  the  starting  point  or  principle.  Thought,  however,  is 
set  in  motion  by  the  object  of  the  thought ;  but  only  one  of  the  two  series  is 
absolutely  intelligible,  and  in  this  Being  stands  first  defined  as  simple  and  actual." 
M eta.  XII,  7,  1072,  a,  26.  "  The  final  cause  operates  like  a  loved  object,  and 
that  which  is  moved  by  it  communicates  motion  to  the  rest."  Meta.  1072,  6,  3. 
1  "Philosophy  of  the  Organism"  (Macmillan). 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  365 

we  cannot  account  for  the  prospective  value  of  the  parts  of 
protoplasm,  as  shown  especially  in  restitution  and  heredity, 
unless  we  introduce  entelechies.  "An  entelechy  means  the 
faculty  of  achieving  'forma  essentialis.'"  Now  these  entele- 
chies, while  figuring  in  the  process,  are  not  on  the  one  hand 
psychological  entities,  nor  on  the  other  are  they  energies.  They 
can,  however,  be  best  understood  from  psychological  analogies. 
They  are  selective.  They  perform  functions  which  resemble 
judging  and  liking,  willing  and  thinking.  Yet,  while  they  are 
not  energies,  they  can  under  certain  conditions  suspend  the 
energetic  reactions;  and  they  have  a  regulative  function  in 
the  process.  But  while  Driesch's  attempt  to  get  away  from  the 
anthropomorphism  of  Aristotle  is  commendable,  it  must  be 
said  that  Aristotle's  final  causes  are  at  least  intelligible,  being 
drawn  from  our  experience  of  certain  processes  where  they  do 
hold.  Valuable  as  is  Driesch's  empirical  work,  his  entelechies 
seem  to  have  no  meaning  at  all;  they  are  merely  duplicates 
of  the  selective  and  prospective  tendencies  of  the  process. 
Moreover,  such  a  selective  function  is  by  no  means  limited  to 
the  organic  realm ;  we  find  it,  though  with  less  complicated 
working,  in  the  chemical  affinities.  In  any  case,  it  is  hard  to 
see  what  we  have  gained  by  hypostasizing  such  tendencies 
and  giving  them  a  Greek  name. 

.  Vitalism.  —  Mechanism  and  classical  finalism  deal  with 
partial  aspects  of  the  process.  Vitalism  attempts  to  find  a 
common  denominator  for  the  process  as  a  whole. 

Bergson  l  and  others  have  pointed  out  with  great  clearness 
that  the  correlative  growth  of  organs  and  functions  in  organic 
life,  for  example  in  the  eye,  could  not  be  accounted  for  by  mere 
accidental  variations  and  natural  selection.  If  in  any  one 
part  such  variations  were  considerable  and  abrupt,  as  in  the 
case  of  mutations,  they  would  only  interfere  the  more  with  the 
functioning  of  the  organ.  If  they  were  small  they  might  not 
interfere,  but  they  would  have  to  accumulate  through  ages, 
and  correlative  changes  in  this  and  other  organs  would  have  to 
take  place,  so  as  to  produce  harmonious  adjustment  or  adaptive 
functioning.  This  is  almost  impossible  to  conceive  on  the  basis 
of  chance. 

1  "Creative  Evolution"  (Henry  Holt  &  Co.). 


366  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

So  with  the  different  directions  in  which  evolution  has  pro- 
ceeded. These  directions  must  be  implied  in  the  process,  even 
though  we  can  only  read  them  backwards,  as  at  sea  we  read 
the  direction  of  the  ship's  movement  from  the  silver  wake  where 
we  have  passed. 

As  between  mechanism  and  intellectual  finalism,  Bergson 
suggests  the  middle  ground  of  vital  impulse,  in  which  is  im- 
plied the  complexity  that  afterwards  appears,  when  evolution 
splits  up  in  the  struggle  with  the  environment,  as  the  potential 
effects  of  the  skyrocket  appear  when  it  bursts  in  the  air.  The 
most  important  of  these  tendencies  are  the  split  of  life  into 
the  vegetable  and  animal,  and  the  dissociation  of  mind  into 
instinct  and  intelligence.  Evolution  is  division.  In  the  divi- 
sion, however,  there  remains  a  suggestion  of  the  other  side; 
some  common  characters,  however  secondary,  abide.  Plant 
life  carries  a  blend  of  the  animal;  intelligence  a  blend  of  in- 
stinct. The  progress  and  continuity  of  the  process  in  either 
case  are  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  push  from  behind  of  the 
common  vital  impulse. 

Whether  this  vital  impulse,  as  a  distinct  determinant  in  the 
evolution  of  life,  must  be  added  to  the  chemical  determinants 
with  which  naturalism  deals,  must  be  decided  by  scientific 
evidence.  Once  admit  creative  evolution  in  general,  and  recog- 
nize in  particular  that  every  compound  must  be  regarded  as 
a  creative  result,  possessing  a  new  and  unique  set  of  reactions 
and  not  a  mere  addition  of  the  characters  of  the  separately  known 
elements  which  enter  into  it, — and  the  conceptual  difficulty 
disappears.  Whether,  as  externally  viewed,  life  itself  can  be 
regarded  as  a  compound,  or  whether  to  produce  life  some  new 
factor  must  be  supposed  to  have  been  added  from  without, 
must  be  decided  upon  evidence.  At  present  the  difficulties  of 
conceiving  that  life  was  introduced  from  outside  into  our  planet 
seem  at  least  as  great  as  those  of  the  theory  that  it  arose  from 
certain  antecedent  conditions  on  our  planet.  In  any  case,  we 
are  dealing  essentially  with  mechanism.  Vital  impulse,  as 
pictured  by  Bergson,  is  no  less  blind  than  the  elements  of 
chemistry.  Its  structure,  in  order  to  account  for  all  the  diver- 
sity of  life,  must  be  no  less  atomic  than  science  has  pictured 
the  physical  structure  to  be.  Moreover,  synthesis  would 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  367 

seem  to  be  as  characteristic  of  evolution  as  division ;  and  if  so, 
why  may  not  life  itself  be  regarded  as  a  new  synthesis,  under 
specific  conditions,  in  the  creative  process? 

The  trouble  with  the  hypothesis  of  vital  impulse  is  that,  like 
any  conception  that  tries  to  explain  everything,  it  explains  noth- 
ing. We  still  have  the  diversity  of  the  process,  with  its  direc- 
tion, to  account  for.  To  say  that  what  does  happen  can  hap- 
pen, is  self-evident,  and  that  is  all  that  vitalism  tells  us.  In 
trying  to  explain  everything  from  below,  the  higher  from  the 
more  primitive,  it  is  pragmatically  indistinguishable  from  the 
naturalistic  mechanism  which  it  condemns.  The  latter  at 
least  furnishes  the  only  empirically  fruitful  method  of  investi- 
gating the  apparent  sequences  of  life.  To  account,  further, 
for  the  direction  or  meaning  of  the  process,  we  must  have  some- 
thing besides  a  blind  vis  a  tergo.  What  this  means  we  must 
presently  see  more  in  detail. 

It  is  at  least  infinitely  improbable  that  mere  chance,  or  mere 
external  conjunction,  whether  in  terms  of  vitalism  or  of  chemical 
mechanism,  should  have  accomplished  the  results  of  organiza- 
tion, with  the  compensatory  adjustments  involved  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  life  and  mind.  There  must  be  some  continuity  which 
enables  us  to  read  down  from  the  higher  as  well  as  to  read  up 
from  the  lower. 

It  is  also  unlikely  that  all  life  is  a  compound  having  the  poten- 
tiality of  the  development  of  the  higher  forms  with  their  awaken- 
ing ideals.  It  is  easier  to  suppose  that  life,  as  Maxwell  supposes 
in  regard  to  matter,  has  its  omniscient  sorting  demon  who 
interpenetrates  and  selects  in  accordance  with  certain  standards. 
In  other  words,  the  natural  order  must  be  thought  of  as  inter- 
penetrated by  an  intelligent  order.  Aristotle's  failure  to  make 
form  (in  the  sense  of  ideal  conceptions)  effective,  and  his  re- 
course to  mechanical  push  to  move  the  universe,  should  show 
us  that  form,  in  order  to  be  efficient,  must  dip  into  the  dynamic 
process  itself,  whether  in  a  personal  or  impersonal  way.  In  the 
plastic  responsiveness  of  the  natural  order  to  this,  the  unseen 
order,  would  in  that  case  lie  its  capacity  for  progress.  This 
plasticity  becomes  more  and  more  apparent  in  the  higher  orders 
of  life  with  their  vast  complexity  of  possibilities  and  their 
organization  for  action.  The  nervous  system  is  peculiarly  the 


368  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

type  of  plastic  responsiveness  both  to  the  unseen  order  which 
overarches  and  permeates  and  to  the  sense-order  which  es- 
tablishes the  immediate  conditions  of  survival. 

II.   A  New  Teleology  Suggested 

We  have  little  sympathy  to-day  with  Plato's  "heavenly  pat- 
tern" and  Aristotle's  "  final  causes/'  that  is,  with  ideal  con- 
ceptions as  determining  existence  and  survival.  We  are  apt 
to  think  of  the  process  of  evolution  as  blindly  accomplishing 
its  course  as  a  result  of  internal  and  external  accidents.  At 
best,  some  would  say,  it  is  only  in  retrospect  that  nature  finds 
that  some  ways  of  doing  things  seem  good  and  so  strives  to 
preserve  them.  Mind  itself,  with  its  ideals,  some  have  come 
to  treat  in  this  retrospective  way.  And  any  emphasis  on  ideals 
has  been  promptly  treated  as  an  hypostasis  of  our  own  ab- 
stractions. Chance  variation  is  regarded  as  the  mother  of  mind 
and  form,  ideals  are  but  indications  of  the  drift,  not  its  rationale. 

Even  on  this  materialistic  view,  some  use  may  be  found  for 
the  "final  form"  of  Aristotle.  It  represents,  at  any  rate,  the 
way  we  look  back  upon  the  series  after  its  conclusion.  Ideals 
and  types,  as  our  measures,  form  a  posteriori  a  convenient  in- 
strument for  viewing  the  flux,  and  furnish  a  certain  subjective 
satisfaction.  But  can  we  stop  here?  Is  the  type,  the  "final 
form,"  a  mere  result  of  accident?  Could  the  direction  of  the 
organic  process,  or  of  social  ideals,  have  been  the  opposite,  if 
accident  so  decreed?  Is  there  no  objective  way  of  reading  the 
series?  Does  it  appear  as  it  does,  simply  because  we  happen 
to  be  at  this  end  of  it?  And  when  life  repeats  itself,  with 
seemingly  new  efforts  to  reproduce  a  type,  is  this  sufficiently 
accounted  for  by  accident?  Could  thought  have  been  con- 
stituted entirely  otherwise  ?  Is  the  whole  story  of  life,  from  the 
chaotic  protoplasm  from  which  it  started  to  the  striving  for 
truth  and  beauty,  all  a  matter  of  blind  variations,  operated  on 
by  a  blind  environment? 

However  fully  such  a  picture  may  do  justice  to  our  ignorance, 
it  yet  does  not  satisfy  our  reason.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
reason  it  is  easier  to  read  nature  as  striving  to  express  certain 
types  or  ideals  than  to  read  ideals  as  chance.  Nature  seems 
to  be,  somehow,  leading  in  the  direction  of  human  nature ;  the 


TELEOLOGICAL   IDEALISM  369 

striving  for  a  type  somehow  to  be  determining  the  direction  of 
the  series;  and  freedom  and  significant  expression  of  life  to 
be  all  the  time  the  end  to  be  realized. 

I  admit  the  difficulty  of  making  this  clear.  But  as  a  faith 
it  ought  to  have,  at  any  rate,  the  same  opportunity  as  the 
materialistic  faith  in  blind  chance.  If  in  our  ignorance  it 
makes  the  transitions  of  the  facts  easier  for  us,  that  gives  it  a 
pragmatic  advantage  over  the  more  shocking  rival  faith.  And 
I  must  confess  that  to  me  the  culmination  of  a  process  in  the 
appreciation  of  truth  and  beauty  is  more  reasonably  accounted 
for  in  a  universe  which  has  a  fundamental  formal  character, 
and  as  such  is  selective,  than  in  a  universe  in  which  this  ideali- 
zation is  an  accident.  On  such  reasonableness  we  may  finally 
have  to  rest  our  mode  of  understanding  the  significance  of 
evolution.  Some  may  call  this  a  mere  temperamental  prefer- 
ence. In  that  case  the  temperament  remains  to  be  accounted 
for.  To  me  this  seems  a  fundamental  demand  for  coherency 
and  unity,  while  chance,  formless  happening,  is  fundamentally 
irrational  —  an  apotheosis  of  our  ignorance  of  the  modus 
operandi  of  nature. 

Whether  the  final  cause  operates  through  the  inner  striving 
of  the  process  for  its  type,  its  final  realization,  or  whether  the 
efficiency  of  the  final  cause  means  the  operation  in  the  universe 
of  an  ideal  will,  after  the  analogy  of  the  artist,  interpenetrating 
our  finite  world  of  process,  selecting  and  rejecting  with  reference 
to  the  realization  of  the  type,  —  star  type  or  man  type,  —  must 
again  be  decided  by  our  experience,  fragmentary  as  this  is. 
Different  ages  and  minds  find  one  or  the  other  of  these  attitudes 
more  congenial.  In  any  case  the  form  would  in  some  sense  pre- 
exist in  the  process ;  and  in  any  case  evolution  would  mean  the 
differentiation  of  the  organs  for  the  proper  realization  of  this 
form  and,  in  man  at  least,  for  the  significant  sharing  of  it. 

Mechanism,  while  true  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  at  best  only  an 
account  of  the  physical  conditions  of  heredity.  Heredity  does 
not  mean  merely  the  passing  over  of  protoplasmic  and  chromo- 
some potentials.  It  means  also  the  arising  of  a  unique  cona- 
tive  disposition,  through  the  impulse  of  generation.  It  is 
this  which  furnishes  the  architectonic  principle  of  the  develop- 
ing life  process.  The  chemical  situation  must  be  looked  upon 


370  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

as  the  vehicle  or  instrument  of  this  process.  Heredity  must 
be  understood  not  merely  as  a  physical  stream,  but  also  as 
a  psychic  stream,  with  its  variations,  its  cumulation,  and  its 
characteristic  categories. 

The  final  theory  of  evolution  must  include  both  mechanism 
and  finalism.  For  the  time  being,  in  predicting  and  controlling 
the  process,  we  must  work  by  efficient  causes.  Science  has  no 
choice  in  this  matter.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  admit  that 
the  ideal  selection  of  the  later  stages  has  some  continuity  with 
the  earlier  stages.  When  we  try  to  read  the  process  in  the 
large,  at  any  rate,  we  must  somehow  recognize  the  direction 
within  it.  We  may  choose  to  ignore  the  final  reason  of  things, 
and  limit  ourselves  to  the  description  of  sequences,  but  it 
nevertheless  remains  true  that  in  part  of  the  process  formal 
selection  is  a  reality,  and  no  fair  account  can  be  given  of  evolu- 
tion without  recognizing  this  part  and  its  relation  to  the  whole. 
Invariable  sequence,  habit,  recapitulation,  and  other  external 
forms  of  linkage  are  but  names  for  the  facts.  They  merely 
indicate  that  facts  do  repeat  themselves ;  they  are  not  explana- 
tions. In  some  way  the  formal  categories,  of  which  we  become 
conscious  in  human  nature,  must  reveal  to  us  the  tendencies  of 
nature ;  in  some  way  the  blossom  on  the  tree  of  evolution  must 
be  indicative  of  the  process  which  brought  it  into  existence. 
The  universe  must  be  such  as  to  account  for  the  ideals  which 
are  a  part  of  our  experience,  as  well  as  for  the  externality  and 
blindness  which  we  find.  As  man  in  his  small  way,  by  his 
selection  and  emphasis  of  certain  types  of  universe,  is  creative, 
so  we  must  suppose  that  the  process  of  which  he  is  a  part  and 
which  awakens  to  reflection  in  him  is  likewise  creative.  This 
need  not  mean  that  the  later  stages  are  present  bodily  in  the 
earlier,  or  that  the  earlier  stages  work  by  "  conceptions, "  but 
it  means  that  somehow  the  categories  which  the  later  idealizing 
process  brings  to  bear  upon  the  earlier  in  our  idealization  of 
them  are  germane  to  these  earlier  and  not  accidental. 

Of  the  two  conceptions,  the  mechanistic  and  the  teleological, 
the  latter  is  the  one  that  overlaps.  By  means  of  laws  that  are 
familiar  to  us  in  the  later  purposive  stages  we  can  account 
for  the  automatism,  the  mechanism,  the  seeming  deadness  of 
the  world.  By  means  of  mechanism  we  cannot  account  for 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  371 

the  seeming  plasticity  and  value  in  parts  of  the  process,  at 
least  not  without  falling  back  upon  the  miraculous,  and  so 
doing  violence  to  our  original  concept.  If  we  deny  the  reality 
of  mind  and  ideals,  we  cannot  account  for  the  sense  of  promise 
of  the  world  and  of  its  openness  toward  the  future,  however 
convenient  the  conception  of  mechanism  may  be  in  epitomiz- 
ing the  past.  In  some  way  we  must  recognize  emphasis  and 
preferential  selection,  for  human  nature  is  part  of  nature. 

That  a  universe  should  tend  to  realize  a  certain  form  is  no 
more  mysterious  than  that  animals  should  turn  toward  or 
away  from  the  light,  or  that  the  elements  should  attract  or 
repel  each  other.  In  any  case,  in  the  last  analysis,  we  must 
fall  back  upon  the  constitution  of  reality  as  discovered  in 
experience,  and  regard  that  as  reasonable  which  works  out. 
That  a  possibility  of  reasonableness  should  exist  in  a  world 
which  evolves  reason,  seems  certainly  a  reasonable  demand. 

It  is  the  naturalistic  materialist  who  has  violated  the  principle 
of  continuity  in  nature  by  cutting  the  higher  stages  of  the  pro- 
cess loose  from  the  earlier.  Why  the  materialist,  who  is  always 
emphasizing  continuity,  should  turn  round  when  it  comes  to 
human  nature  and  its  ideals,  and  here  insist  upon  discontinuity, 
a  complete  break,  absolute  irrelevance  to  what  precedes,  can 
be  explained  only  as  the  result  of  prejudice.  He  had  rather 
make  any  sacrifice  than  give  up  his  faith  in  the  adequacy  of  the 
mechanical  method  of  reading  the  facts.  If  we  would  be  fair, 
must  we  not  insist  that  human  nature,  with  the  ideals  which 
it  brings  to  light,  reveals  truly  and  fundamentally  the  drift 
of  nature?  If  we  make  nature  responsible  for  evolution,  then 
we  must  at  any  rate  give  nature  full  credit.  We  must  keep  in 
mind  that  thought,  right,  and  beauty  are  as  much  expressions 
of  nature  as  is  the  law  of  falling  bodies.  The  whole  history 
of  evolution,  including  institutions,  science,  and  art,  must  be 
somehow  prefigured  in  the  nature  of  the  universe  as  a  whole. 
The  after-form  which  we  read  in  retrospect  must  somehow  be 
foreshadowed  in  the  process  which  terminates  in  it  and  which 
makes  such  reading  possible.  Consciousness  but  reveals,  it 
does  not  make  the  categories  which  guide  mind  in  its  higher 
activity. 

Thus  both  the  mechanical  and  the  teleological  categories 


372  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

must  run  through  the  various  stages  of  evolution,  however 
different  their  concrete  richness  and  significance  become  with 
the  varying  complexity  of  the  process.  And  this  may  be  true 
irrespective  of  the  stuff  in  which  these  categories  express  them- 
selves. We  have  material  mechanism  and  spiritual  mechanism ; 
and  why  not  material  teleology  as  well  as  spiritual  teleology,  — 
just  as  the  genius  of  the  artist  may  express  his  meaning  in 
marble,  on  canvas,  in  tones,  or  by  means  of  words  ?  The  body 
is  different,  the  limitations  which  the  material  sets  are  different, 
but  the  ideal  laws  are  the  same. 

If  we  take  even  the  categories  of  mechanism,  we  are  most 
familiar  with  those  which  are  expressed  in  terms  of  our  own 
mental  life,  for  memory  and  habit  are  categories  of  mechanism. 
As  in  the  mechanical  categories  we  can  trace  the  identity  be- 
tween the  higher  processes  of  memory  association  and  the 
lower  processes  of  perceptual  habit  and  automatic  activities, 
so  we  can  trace  the  identity  of  the  categories  of  external  mental 
coherence  with  the  categories  of  external  coherence  in  the  non- 
conscious  world.  Whether  we  use  the  term  habit  or  some  other 
term  to  indicate  this  universality  of  mechanism  is  a  matter  of 
convenience.  If  we  cannot  surely  say,  with  C.  S.  Peirce,  that 
matter  is  "mind  hide-bound  with  habit,"  we  can  say  that  mech- 
anism, in  the  sense  of  external  determination,  overlaps  mind 
and  matter,  and  has  essentially  the  same  categories  in  each. 

On  the  analogy  of  memory,  or  rather  by  the  use  of  categories 
which  we  must  regard  as  identical  and  which  are  applicable 
both  to  the  mechanism  of  memory  and  to  the  simpler  forms 
of  mechanism,  we  can  account  for,  or  at  any  rate  throw  light 
upon,  processes  which  at  first  seem  mysterious  enough.  In  the 
case  of  memory,  each  part  has  by  its  position  a  certain  function 
whereby  it  brings  into  the  field  of  consciousness  certain  other 
parts.  In  other  words,  the  memory  mechanism  is  a  constella- 
tion of  mutually  determining  parts,  each  able  to  restore  other 
parts  within  the  cluster.  The  mechanism  is  not  absolute ;  there 
are  minor  fluctuations  even  in  reproductive  imagination ;  while 
the  situations  are  sufficiently  identical  for  recognition  with  its 
feeling  of  familiarity,  new  details  have  been  added,  old  details 
dropped  out,  and  the  tone  of  the  situation  may  be  greatly 
changed.  In  practical  life  we  pass  over  these  fluctuations  as 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  373 

of  no  consequence  to  the  process.  In  productive  imagination, 
on  the  other  hand,  new  types  of  universals  are  brought  to  light, 
which  become  permanent  parts  of  our  ideal  activity. 

In  spite  of  the  greater  complexity  of  the  process  in  the 
higher  stages  and  the  consciousness  which  accompanies  it 
there,  it  is  easy  to  see  the  fundamental  identity  of  the  operation 
of  nature  here  with  those  operations  which  we  find  in  the 
lower  stages,  such  as  heredity  and  the  restitution  (within  greater 
or  smaller  limits)  of  parts.  In  each  of  these  cases  we  have 
to  do,  whether  in  a  material  or  a  mental  way,  with  the  positional 
value  of  a  part  within  a  constellation  and  its  power  to  restore 
its  context,  whether  this  context  be  the  space  context  of  a 
pattern  of  parts,  simultaneously  and  mutually  supplementing 
one  another,  or  a  time  context,  where  the  parts  blend  into  one 
another  and  constitute  a  sequential  whole,  as  in  the  stages  in 
the  life  of  an  organism  or  the  movement  of  a  melody.  Some 
writers  have  called  this  positional  potentiality  of  parts,  on  the 
level  of  unconscious  life,  organic  memory.  It  is  truer,  however, 
to  regard  memory  as  a  highly  specialized  form  of  the  more 
universal  tendency  of  reproduction  of  parts,  with  their  fluctua- 
tions or  mutations. 

Thus  it  seems  that  certain  mechanical  categories  are  common 
to  our  minds  and  to  the  rest  of  reality.  The  preservation  of  a 
type,  the  tendency  of  one  part  to  restore  the  rest  of  its  complex, 
seem  to  be  common  to  the  mechanism  of  the  ideal  stage  and 
to  that  of  lower  activity.  On  the  teleological  side,  too,  we 
have  reason  to  believe  that  there  must  be  similar  identity,  — 
elementary  formal  categories  running  through  the  process  as 
a  whole,  whether  inorganic,  organic,  or  ideal  selection,  —  not 
limited  to  mind  but  present  in  some  way,  however  unconscious, 
in  the  lower  stages.  There  seems  to  be  a  tendency  toward 
clearness  and  distinctness,  toward  economy  in  relationships. 
That  is  why  the  fundamental  postulate  of  simplicity  has  proved 
so  convenient  both  in  our  theoretical  and  practical  adjustments 
to  our  world. 

That  nature  has,  as  it  were,  an  aesthetic  sense,  that  it  operates 
so  as  to  produce  clearness  and  distinctness,  is  shown  throughout 
its  whole  range  of  development.  The  inorganic  world,  as  well 
as  the  organic,  seems  to  respond  to  our  ideal  demands  for  simple 


374  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

formulations,  for  distinct  types.  Physical  harmony  follows 
the  simplest  ratios,  as  was  pointed  out  by  Helmholtz.  The 
light  rays  move  in  straight  lines,  the  chemical  elements  seem 
to  fall  into  a  " natural  series,"  with  relations  that  can  be  mathe- 
matically predicted.  In  the  organic  world  nature  likewise 
demands  clearness  and  distinctness;  the  protean  fluctuations 
fail  to  survive.  Only  the  mutations,  the  distinct  types,  con- 
tinue in  heredity.  Again,  the  mixture  of  species  either  gives 
rise  to  no  offspring  or  produces  sterility ;  or  in  the  case  of  more 
approximate  species  a  final  reversion  to  the  original  type  takes 
place  in  accordance  with  Mendel's  law.  Finally,  in  ideal 
creativeness  and  psychological  heredity  clearness  and  distinct- 
ness is  the  law.  Here  our  conscious  aim  is  to  eliminate  the 
irrelevant  and  make  the  type,  or  universal,  stand  out.  Only 
the  clear  and  distinct  types  succeed  in  becoming  a  permanent 
part  of  individual  memory  and  social  history.  The  infinite 
minor  fluctuations  come  and  go.  We  may  therefore  assume  that 
the  law  which  nature  manifests  in  its  highest  creativeness,  and 
of  which  we  are  aware  in  our  ideal  production,  namely,  the  law 
of  clearness  and  distinctness,  is  identical  with  the  law  which 
governs  nature  throughout  its  various  stages,  and  that  the 
highest  manifestations  of  this  law  differ  from  the  lower  primarily 
in  the  freedom  and  spontaneity  with  which  the  law  realizes 
itself  in  the  former.  An  immanent  form  in  any  case  leads  nature 
onward.  While  the  law  becomes  conscious  in  the  higher  stages, 
it  does  not  follow  that  it  originates  there.  On  the  contrary,  it 
comes  to  our  creative  activity  as  a  presupposition  or  command, 
as  the  voice  of  the  universe. 

This  demand  for  clearness  and  distinctness  in  nature  is  seen 
even  where  there  is  mutation  and  instability.  In  a  universal 
process  the  demand  for  clearness  and  distinctness  necessarily 
presents  an  infinite  problem.  In  the  case  of  the  radio-active 
elements  we  seem  to  have  such  a  case  of  mutation  and  instability 
in  the  natural  series  of  elements.  In  the  organic  series  periods 
of  stability  seem  to  alternate  with  periods  of  mutation.  But 
in  each  case  the  spontaneity  of  nature  illustrates  the  law  or 
tendency  which  nature  is  ever  striving  to  realize,  and  which  is 
shown  all  the  more  strikingly  because  in  places  the  process  is 
still  open  and  is  striving  for  a  new  equilibrium. 


TELEOLOGICAL   IDEALISM  375 

Science,  therefore,  even  of  the  most  naturalistic  kind  postu- 
lates more  than  it  knows,  more  than  the  blind  mechanism  with 
which  it  professes  to  work.  It  posits  by  its  own  faith  and 
persistent  effort,  as  it  verifies  by  its  success,  that  the  universe 
must  lend  itself  to  ideals  of  simplicity  and  unity,  that  those  laws 
which  we  discover  for  ourselves  in  the  higher  creative  activities 
are  relevant  to  our  world,  in  brief  that  in  a  large  sense  the  uni- 
verse is  fundamentally  teleological.  For  us  thus  to  strive  to 
conquer  the  universe  is  part  of  the  universe.  The  imperishable 
faith  on  the  part  of  this  piece  of  animated  clay  that,  in  spite 
of  seeming  defeat,  it  can  yet  make  its  demands  prevail,  that  our 
will  can  in  a  measure  reconstruct  a  world  which  shall  be  clear 
and  distinct  in  its  relationships  in  spite  of  seeming  chaos,  — 
this  faith  is  evidence  of  the  voice  of  the  universe,  of  its  push 
toward  ideal  realization.  By  virtue  of  this,  "hope  springs 
eternal  in  the  human  breast."  This  faith  is  more  fundamentally 
pious  than  our  short  cuts  by  way  of  an  anthropomorphic  God. 
The  trouble  with  so  much  of  our  thinking  both  of  the  mechanical 
and  teleological  type  is  that  it  has  been  truncated.  It  lacks 
thoroughness. 

Geometry,  mathematical  simplification,  is  but  this  faith  in 
clearness  and  distinctness  reduced  to  its  ultimate  terms.  It  is 
the  idealizing  process  in  the  abstract,  outstripping  as  it  comes 
to  consciousness  in  us,  its  concrete  limitations.  And  so  form 
appears  as  limit  to  our  finite  experience ;  yet,  when  you  bring 
back  this  faith  to  our  motley  world,  how  convenient  it  proves, 
how  well  our  world  lends  itself  to  it,  irrespective  of  variety  of 
stuff,  so  as  to  make  it  seem  that  the  universe  "geometrizes." 
And  in  a  deep  sense  it  does;  for  both  the  seemingly  opaque 
world  we  strive  to  know  and  our  thought  are  part  and  parcel 
of  one  process;  in  their  formal  presuppositions  they  are  one. 
Nature  owns  and  molds  mind  into  its  own  requirements.  If 
the  process  in  the  universe,  from  the  stellar  movements  and  the 
minute  relations  in  the  structure  of  things  to  the  harmonic 
relations  of  music,  seeks  geometrical  and  arithmetical  patterns, 
this  is  not  because  our  thinking  regulates  the  process,  but  be- 
cause in  the  laws  of  our  thinking  we  discover  the  pure  mani- 
festations of  the  inherent  form,  not  obscured  by  the  concrete 
transitions  and  changes  of  process. 


376  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

That,  again,  our  conceptualizing  should  prove  approximate 
is  inevitable  in  a  moving  world.  In  such  a  world  form  must 
ever  manifest  itself  as  tendency  or  direction,  —  as  an  ought. 
Absolute  our  ideal  formulations  could  only  prove  in  a  world 
which  had  completely  settled  or  encrusted  itself.  But  such  a 
universe  would  be  dead.  Process,  transmutation,  creative- 
ness,  is  of  the  nature  of  reality  and  must  be  accepted  as  such. 
That  nature  is  creative  and  not  merely  reproductive  of  ready- 
made  universals  is  shown  both  on  the  plane  of  the  unconscious 
origination  of  the  lower  levels  of  nature  and  on  the  plane  of 
ideal  creativeness.  Organically,  nature  is  ever  creating  and 
fixing  new  types ;  and  in  our  ideal  constructions  this  is  no  less 
true.  If,  on  the  organic  level,  nature  is  prodigal  in  her  experi- 
ment, she  is  no  less  prodigal  on  the  ideal  level.  How  few  poems, 
pictures,  laws,  practical  plans,  out  of  the  myriads  evolved, 
answer  the  permanent  ideal  demands  of  the  race ! 

If  nature  stands  in  relation  to  its  processes  as  an  artist 
attempting  to  express  a  form  —  a  form  not  foreign  to  itself 
but  its  own  implicit  or  explicit  constitution  —  then  we  must 
regard  natural  selection  as  part  of  the  same  activity,  differing 
only  in  the  degree  of  conscious  direction  and  significance.  The 
latter  is  itself  a  result  of  the  demand  for  clearness  and  distinct- 
ness of  functioning  on  the  part  of  nature.  In  natural  selection 
this  formal  demand  realizes  itself  automatically  in  the  flux  of 
process.  Just  as  the  stone  rolls  back  again  to  the  bottom  unless 
it  reaches  the  top  of  the  hill,  so  life  tumbles  back  to  the  inchoate 
plane  from  which  it  has  tried  to  rise  unless  it  reaches  a  clear  and 
distinct  type.  On  the  level  of  thought,  however,  where  nature 
is  more  or  less  clearly  conscious  of  her  aim,  the  process  of  so- 
called  "artificial"  selection  is  far  more  economical  and  efficient. 
Not  only  can  ages  of  unconscious  experimenting  be  fore- 
shortened, but  results  of  clearness  and  distinctness  can  be  at- 
tained which  blind  groping  never  could  reach.  And  with  it  all, 
there  is  added  the  consciousness  of  value  with  its  infinite  richness. 

It  is  not  a  case  of  natural  laws  in  the  spiritual  world  or  of 
spiritual  laws  in  the  natural  world,  but  of  certain  laws  pre- 
vailing throughout  the  process  of  the  universe,  expressing  them- 
selves in  the  limitations  of  each  particular  stage  and  stuff 
in  which  they  operate,  just  as  the  categories  of  art  are  funda- 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  377 

mentally  the  same  whether  the  stuff  be  marble,  tone,  or  the 
body  of  language.  What  makes  the  law  in  each  case  clear  is 
the  interpenetration  of  the  same  identical  form.  The  various 
energies  are  fundamentally  run  through  with  the  same  cate- 
gories. It  is  a  case  of  our  reasonable  reading  of  our  world. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  sum  up  the  internal  conditions 
governing  the  continuity  of  process.  For  the  present  purpose, 
the  elementary  facts  in  the  constitution  of  process  may  be 
considered  as  three :  (1)  the  fluency  of  process  which  makes 
it  overflow  our  abstract  types,  producing  ever  new  fluctuations 
and  mutations;  (2)  the  mechanical  aspect  of  process  which 
makes  its  flow  crystallize  provisionally  at  least  into  certain 
structures,  making  it  possible  to  predict  and  control  its  flow ; 
(3)  the  formal  requirements  which  condition  the  direction  and 
intelligibility  of  the  process. 

Two  questions  yet  remain,  namely,  the  character  of  this 
formal  constitution  and  the  question  of  its  effectiveness  in  our 
world  of  process.  Coming  back  to  our  first  question,  How  do 
forms  preexist  or  what  forms  are  presupposed?  I  do  not 
believe  that  it  is  necessary  to  assume  an  indefinite  number  of 
forms  as  do  Plato  and  Aristotle.  True,  Aristotle  limited  the 
forms  to  class-forms  and  depended  upon  the  concrete  process  to 
differentiate  these  into  individuals.  I  would  make  the  formal 
requirements  still  more  general  —  the  same  for  the  process  as 
a  whole.  These  formal  requirements,  as  I  have  shown,  can  be 
reduced  in  the  last  analysis  to  the  demand  for  clearness  and 
distinctness  as  regards  the  transitions  and  relations  within  the 
process.  Variations,  smaller  or  larger,  are  ever  produced ;  they 
tend  to  crystallize  —  to  be  retained  and  to  reproduce  their 
contents  by  virtue  of  the  inherent  mechanism  of  the  process. 
But  they  survive  in  the  process,  so  far  as  internal  conditions 
are  concerned,  only  if  they  fulfill  the  formal  requirements  of 
clearness  and  distinctness.  Neither  the  types  nor  the  individ- 
uals are  predetermined  as  such.  But  when  in  the  course  of 
the  transmutations  they  do  arise,  they  must,  in  order  to  survive, 
obey  certain  formal  laws  —  laws  which  are  also  fundamental 
in  our  understanding  and  appreciation  of  our  world. 

Of  course,  besides  the  internal  conditions  of  survival  there 
are  the  external  conditions,  which  fix  what  types  can  survive 


378  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

in  the  particular  environment,  simple  or  complex,  low  or  high, 
as  it  may  be.  But  these  can  only  eliminate,  they  cannot  make 
types  permanent. 

These  external  conditions  cannot  be  conceived  in  merely 
material  terms.  There  is  more  than  one  level  of  environment. 
If  we  take  into  account  merely  the  simplest  environment,  the 
micro-organisms  are  better  adapted  to  it  than  we  are.  They 
were  here  before  us,  and  will  remain  for  ages  after  the  earth 
becomes  uninhabitable  for  the  higher  forms  of  life.  Some  of 
them  are  adapted  to  withstand  the  temperature  of  liquid  air. 

There  seem  to  be  certain  plateaus,  levels,  or  crusts  of  life, 
more  or  less  rhythmically  formed.  These  have  their  own  unique 
conditions  for  survival.  In  social  life  we  have  certain  levels 
in  the  way  of  custom  and  tradition ;  then  there  comes  a  loosen- 
ing of  the  crust  and  a  period  of  agitation  and  rearrangement. 
This  in  turn  is  followed  by  a  new  level  of  equilibrium  with  new 
selective  conditions  for  the  individual.  The  same  seems  to 
be  true  of  life  on  the  organic  level.  Here,  too,  periods  of 
stability  of  species  are  found  to  alternate  with  periods  of  muta- 
tion. And  thus  new  levels  are  reached  with  new  external 
conditions  for  survival. 

As  regards  the  effectivenes  of  form,  Plato  and  Aristotle  have 
shown  that  in  higher  ideal  realization  it  is  not  necessary  that 
the  form  itself  should  move  in  order  to  produce  movement, 
that  is,  that  the  form  should  possess  energy.  The  beloved  may 
be  indifferent  to  the  lover.  Beauty  moves  us  by  its  perfection, 
not  by  its  sensuous  body.  What  is  true  in  the  higher  activities 
may  be  true  of  the  lower.  Substituting  energy  or  tendency 
for  love,  we  may  say  that  energy  seeks  a  geometrical  or  arith- 
metrical  pattern,  seeks  simplicity  of  relationships,  though  the 
formal  limits  which  it  seeks  do  not  act  upon  it.  They  are  in 
fact  part  of  its  constitution.  The  laws  of  logic  do  not  act 
upon  the  process  of  thought.  They  are  implied  in  it.  And 
thought  is  but  nature's  reflection  upon  itself. 

III.   Matter  and  God 

In  closing,  something  must  be  said  about  the  metaphysical 
nature  of  the  world  in  which  form  is  realized.  There  has  been 
in  recent  times  much  sentimental  inveighing  against  the  mean- 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  379 

ness  and  blindness  of  matter.  Now  that  depends  primarily 
upon  definition.  With  some  noble,  rugged  materialists  the 
conception  of  matter  is  decidedly  thick  —  rich  in  possibilities. 
Democritus,  Hobbes,  and  Priestley  deny  nothing  to  matter 
that  could  make  the  world  plausible.  They  attribute  to  matter 
all  the  pragmatic  consequences  with  which  experience  makes 
us  acquainted,  including  mind  and  ideals.  With  Democritus, 
while  mind  is  reduced  to  fire-atoms,  it  loses  nothing  of  its  effi- 
cacy and  dignity  on  that  account.  For  Hobbes,  consciousness 
itself  is  a  property  of  matter  and  so  not  foreign  to  the  world. 
Priestley's  materialistic  hypothesis  does  not  interfere  with  his 
religious  devoutness.  The  great  prophets  of  Israel,  who  gave 
us  our  fundamental  ethical  and  religious  ideals,  thought  of  the 
world,  including  the  human  soul,  —  "the  breath"  of  man, — 
in  material  terms.  With  all  these,  matter  covers  the  whole 
range  of  potentialities  from  inorganic  nature  to  a  deistic  God. 
Tyndall  could  not  cease  to  marvel  at  the  potentialities  of 
matter.  When  we  should  understand  them,  all  would  be  clear. 
With  this  thick  conception  of  matter,  teleological  idealism 
need  not  have  any  quarrel.  Matter  rises  to  any  emergency 
since  the  conception  can  be  enlarged  to  meet  the  case.  It 
would  be  principally  a  question  of  convenience  whether  we 
should  use  such  a  concept. 

The  tendency,  however,  has  not  been  absent  to  narrow  the 
conception  of  matter  to  the  anti-teleological,  or  mechanical, 
interest,  and  thus  to  contrast  matter  with  mind,  —  which 
under  such  a  view  becomes  a  sort  of  miraculous  accident. 
Such  a  conception  still  leaves  much  to  admire.  The  body  with 
its  delicate  adjustments  and  intricacies  shows  wondrous  pos- 
sibilities even  when  contrasted  with  mind.  Even  the  pale  no- 
bility of  the  face  of  a  dead  friend  challenges  our  reverence  by 
its  wonderful  expressiveness.  The  trouble  with  the  mechanical 
conception  is  not  so  much  its  ignobility  as  its  narrowness  —  its 
failure  to  take  stock  of  all  the  facts,  to  furnish  play  for  all  the 
possibilities  of  life. 

If  we  use  matter  in  this  narrower  sense,  as  opposed  to  mind, 
what  is  the  function  of  matter  in  the  process  of  evolution? 
Those  who  have  attempted  to  give  an  account  of  the  world  in 
terms  of  monistic  idealism,  in  whatever  form,  have  eventually 


380  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

been  brought  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  that  upon  which 
the  mind  impinges,  the  non-teleological  stuff  against  which  our 
purposes  seem  to  beat,  and  in  struggling  with  which  they  dis- 
cover themselves.  If  Plato  insists  that  only  the  Good  is 
ultimately  real,  and  all  else  is  imitation  and  non-being,  yet  he 
has  to  recognize  a  reality  at  least  in  the  limitations  which  the 
struggling  elements  of  our  mundane  sphere  set  to  our  purposive 
striving.  If  the  elements  but  reflect  the  universal  beauty, 
they  also  distort  it.  If  Aristotle  finds  in  matter  the  potential, 
yet  it  is  not  passively  potential.  It  has  an  order  of  its  own 
which  may  run  counter  to  the  purposive  order.  The  Platonic 
dualism  meets  us  again  in  Hegel's  spatializing  of  the  category  of 
spirit  and  its  estrangement  in  its  lapse  to  unconscious  other- 
ness. As  Aristotle's  potential,  it  meets  us  in  Fichte's  struggle 
of  the  ego  with  the  irrational  surd  of  our  nature,  while  Schelling 
would  make  the  physical  energies  merely  lower  categories  in 
the  history  of  spirit  as  it  struggles  toward  its  conscious  awaken- 
ing. Bergson  would  make  matter  the  inverse  of  reality  —  the 
intellectual  spatializing  and  degradation  of  a  reality  which  is 
essentially  a  psychic  stream  of  growing,  blending,  interpene- 
trating life-impulses.  But,  nevertheless,  he  has  to  acknowledge 
that  somehow  in  the  struggle  with  matter,  in  order  to  mold 
itself  to  its  constitution,  to  maintain  itself  under  its  conditions, 
life  explodes  like  a  shell  into  its  inherent  tendencies.  In  some 
sense,  then,  the  reality  of  matter,  as  having  a  part  in  the 
realization  of  life,  has  had  to  be  recognized  even  by  those  who 
have  categorically  declared  its  non-existence. 

In  giving  an  adequate  account  of  mechanical  matter  as  an 
external  condition  and  instrument  in  the  evolution  of  life,  a 
pluralistic  conception  of  the  world  has  a  decided  advantage  over 
the  monistic.  It  is  not  forced  to  smuggle  in  through  the  back 
door  what  it  has  cast  out  through  the  front  door.  It  is  free 
to  follow  the  lead  of  experience  in  recognizing  different  types  of 
reality.  Among  these  are  the  physical  types  which,  on  the 
one  hand,  through  their  own  structure  and  laws  set  definite 
conditions  for  the  survival  of  life,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  fur- 
nish the  intellect  with  the  instruments  by  which  life  becomes 
liberated  from  slavery  to  the  immediate  present. 

Even  in  dealing  with  the  physical  world,  where  mechanical 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  381 

conceptions  have  so  long  reigned  supreme  in  our  theorizing,  it 
has  become  more  and  more  clear  that  mechanism  alone,  con- 
venient as  it  is  within  certain  limits,  is  inadequate  as  a  final 
philosophy.  So  far  as  the  naturalistic  aspect  of  the  world  is 
concerned,  it  would  seem  that  the  available  energy  must  con- 
tinually run  down  as  the  streams  run  into  the  sea ;  that  heat 
must  reach  more  and  more  a  condition  of  equal  distribution 
according  to  Carnot's  law,  and  that  the  universe  must'  become 
eventually  stark  still,  or  rather  would  have  had  to  become  so 
infinite  ages  ago.  That  this  law  has  not  thus  operated  must  be 
due  to  the  fact  that  mechanism  is  somehow  a  part  of  a  larger 
constitution  which  is  fundamentally  teleological  and  in  which 
life  and  mind  are  fundamental  categories.  Even  to  explain  the 
activities  of  matter,  we  find  it  convenient  to  think  of  it  as  some- 
how interpenetrated  by  intelligence;  Maxwell's  sorting  omni- 
science keeps  the  universe  from  running  down  to  a  dead  level. 
And  Professor  Henderson  J  has  recently  shown  that  it  is  im- 
probable that  the  ensemble  of  maximal  properties  which  con- 
stitute the  environment  of  life  should  have  been  produced  by 
mere  chance.  It  is  more  congenial  to  our  mind,  at  any  rate, 
to  assume  prospective  intelligent  selection  within  the  physical 
environment,  fitting  it  for  the  abode  of  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  feel  that  merely  reducing  the 
universe  to  metaphysical  mind-stuff,  as  in  the  various  types  of 
panpsychism,  necessarily  ennobles  life.  Because  metaphysical 
idealism  has  seemed  to  furnish  a  congenial  climate  for  our  ideal 
striving,  we  have  often  been  inclined  to  overlook  its  logical 
fallacies,  its  violation  of  common  sense,  the  bankruptcy  of  its 
ethics,  the  romanticism  of  its  procedure.  Few  have  under- 
stood its  technical  terminology.  But  they  have  accepted  it 
emotionally,  nevertheless,  as  a  poem,  a  religion.  Add  to  this 
that  many  champions  of  absolute  idealism,  such  as  Fichte  and 
the  Anglo-American  idealists,  have  themselves  been  noble  and 
inspiring  souls,  whose  emphasis  has  been  on  value  rather  than 
stuff,  and  you  have  the  reason  for  the  recent  vogue  of  panpsy- 
chism. But  the  world  is  neither  better  nor  worse  for  our  meta- 
physical conceptions.  And  if  panpsychism  is  indifferent  to  the 
realization  of  ideals,  if  it  reduces  the  higher  to  the  lower  cate- 

1  "The  Fitness  of  the  Environment  "  (Macmillan,  1912). 


382  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

gories,  if  it  fails  to  give  us  a  preferential  basis  of  values,  if  it 
offers  no  call  to  our  creative  capacities,  it  is  teleologically  in- 
distinguishable from  the  crassest  type  of  materialism.  This  is 
the  logic  of  the  fact  that  so  many  Hegelians  of  the  Left  com- 
pletely faced  about  from  absolute  idealism  to  absolute  material- 
ism, or  rather  found  that  the  former,  as  impersonally  conceived, 
was  equivalent  to  the  latter.  The  mere  reduction  of  the  stuff 
of  the  universe  to  the  type  of  mind-stuff  is  not  sufficient  to 
guarantee  its  value.  The  lowest  things,  as  well  as  the  highest, 
that  we  know  in  our  experience  are  mental.  The  most  de- 
grading lusts  are  as  much  mental  as  the  highest  aspirations. 
Mind  covers  the  whole  range  of  value  from  heaven  to  hell. 

The  pragmatic  difference  in  metaphysical  conceptions  for 
our  ideals  lies  not  in  the  stuff  of  our  conceptions  but  in  their 
friendliness  to  what  we  feel  to  be  our  higher  nature,  the  re- 
enforcement  of  what  we  feel  to  be  the  best  part  of  the  universe, 
our  ideal  demands. 

We  must  not  be  misled  by  mere  words.  We  must  recognize 
that  pragmatically  we  have  dynamic  situations  with  their 
variations  and  their  tendency  toward  types,  whatever  the  meta- 
physical stuff  may  be.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  by 
adopting  more  euphonious  terms  for  these  situations,  such  as 
" vital  impulse"  or  " panpsychism, "  we  have  either  explained 
or  dignified  the  process.  As  general  metaphysical  entities 
they  do  not  alter  the  problem  of  continuity  and  evolution  one 
whit,  though  they  may  be  more  congenial  to  our  imagination. 
The  problem  in  any  case  remains  for  science  to  discover  for 
our  practical  purposes  of  description  and  prediction  the  deter- 
mining factors  in  the  process ;  and  for  philosophy  and  religion 
to  discover  the  immanent  categories  which  enable  us  to  read 
the  process  with  clearness  and  distinctness.  We  must  conceive 
a  world  which  makes  our  minds  feel  at  home.  Teleologically, 
it  makes  no  difference  whether  we  call  the  universe  matter  or 
spirit,  if  we  only  realize  that  it  is  such  as  eventually  to  demand 
and  enforce  ideals.  This  is  its  ultimate  promise  or  potentiality. 
What  name  we  give  to  reality  does  not  matter  so  long  as  its 
properties,  its  pragmatic  outcomes,  are  the  same ;  so  long  as 
it  can  think  and  appreciate  and  furnish  the  object  of  our  hopes ; 
so  long  as  it  blossoms  out  into  a  sense  for  beauty,  a  demand  for 


TELEOLOGICAL  IDEALISM  383 

right,  a  worship  of  the  ideal.  It  is  true  in  any  case  that  the 
universe  makes  us  for  itself,  to  express  itself. 

Our  direct  acquaintance  with  the  effectiveness  of  form  is 
limited  to  the  operation  of  mind  and  to  this  in  its  higher  ideal 
striving.  When  we  try  to  realize  formal  selection  in  the  uni- 
verse at  large,  it  is  at  any  rate  easier  to  picture  such  selection 
to  ourselves  if  we  think  of  a  greater  and  better  mind  inter- 
penetrating the  various  stages  of  the  process  with  intelligent 
interest,  reenforcing  the  formal  demands  of  the  process  and 
eliminating  failures. 

Even  if  the  conception  of  an  abstract,  immanent  form  should 
satisfy  our  purely  logical  and  aesthetic  demands  upon  the  uni- 
verse, our  ethical  and  religious  needs  would  still  call  for  an 
interpenetrating  and  overarching  personal  constitution  which 
works  for  righteousness  and  beauty,  which  is  sympathetically 
concerned  in  ideal  realization,  which  in  short  makes  warm  and 
living  the  formal  constitution  of  the  process.  We  think  of  God 
as  the  master-mind,  interpenetrating  our  minds  and  nature 
and,  in  a  manner  which  we  can  but  faintly  grasp,  guiding  to 
a  meaningful  issue. 

To  be  omnipresent  and  universally  effective,  this  mind 
need  not  be  the  whole  of  things.  Heat  and  gravitation  are 
present  throughout  the  physical  world,  but  they  are  not  the 
whole  of  the  world.  Take  social  history,  —  a  great  personality 
like  Jesus  may  permeate  history  and  make  it  converge  toward 
him,  may  stamp  and  control  history,  and  yet  not  be  all  of 
history. 

Of  this  large  regulative  and  compensating  universal  constitu- 
tion it  must  indeed  seem  that  it  does  a  wholesale  rather  than 
a  retail  business.  This  would  indeed  be  deadening  to  our 
ethical  and  religious  consciousness,  except  for  the  other  analogy 
derived  from  our  own  organic  economy,  namely,  that  the  regular 
adjustments  become  automatically  purposive.  So  the  whole- 
sale operations  of  the  universe  require  no  attention.  Maxwell's 
sorting  demon  can  do  his  work  automatically.  Mechanism  can 
take  over  the  work  of  intelligence.  It  is  only  the  retail  unique 
relations  which  require  interest.  This  leaves  mind,  in  its 
higher  reaches,  free  to  deal  with  the  rarer  personal  aspects  of 
the  situation,  the  spots  where,  by  virtue  of  spontaneity  and 


384  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

complexity,  free  and  rational  creativeness  operates.  And  if 
even  here  personal  interest  or  sympathy  seems  appalling,  we 
must  remember  that  the  Mind  of  minds  is  not  bounded  by  our 
narrow  limitations  of  space  and  time,  but  is  capable  of  an  in- 
finitely larger  field  of  interest.  We  may  also  imagine  that  the 
occasions  for  sharing  in  this  larger  life  lie  in  us  —  this  supra- 
finite  life  lying  ever  at  our  subliminal  or  supraliminal  door, 
ever  waiting,  and  ever  welcoming  the  proper  organization  and 
the  due  awakening  in  us  for  its  powers  to  be  realized,  as  light 
awaits  the  organization  of  an  eye  for  its  beauty  of  color  to 
appear.  Thus  pluralism,  and  pluralism  alone,  with  its  concep- 
tion of  growth  and  organization  of  centers  and  their  mutual 
and  cosmic  interpenetration,  fills  the  need  of  the  religious 
demands  of  life. 

As,  moreover,  our  finite  minds  can  interpenetrate  and  mold 
various  types  of  stuff  into  the  unity  of  ideals,  so  the  Master 
mind  may  interpenetrate  the  variety  of  the  processes  of  nature, 
even  though  they  are  not  mind.  The  statue  can  express  ideals 
even  if  it  is  not  mind-stuff.  We  may  thus  have  teleological 
unity  with  variety  of  stuff  and  stages  of  development.  We 
may  in  closing  adopt  the  language  of  Emerson,  even  though 
we  must  conceive  our  relation  to  the  Master  mind  as  more 
concrete  and  intimate  than  that  implied  in  the  Oversoul : 
"We  live  in  succession,  in  division,  in  particles.  Meantime 
within  man  is  the  soul  of  the  whole,  the  wise  silence,  the  uni- 
versal beauty  to  which  every  part  and  particle  is  related,  the 
eternal  one." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

GENERAL  SURVEY:    THE  FIVE   ATTRIBUTES 

THE  problem  of  attributes  is  somewhat  out  of  fashion  since 
the  dominance  of  modern  idealism.  It  has  become  a  habit 
to  think  of  reality  simply  in  terms  of  experience,  and  reflec- 
tive experience  at  that.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  with 
our  new  epistemological  tools  we  are  in  a  position  to  take  up 
seriously  some  of  our  old  metaphysical  problems,  applying  the 
pragmatic  method.  In  using  the  term  pragmatic,  I  do  not 
mean  to  commit  myself  to  any  of  the  special  doctrines  which 
have  recently  passed  under  that  name.  I  mean  that  any 
reality  must  be  conceived  as  the  differences  it  makes  to  our 
reflective  purposes.  This  holds  whether  the  reality  in  ques- 
tion be  of  the  thing  type  or  the  self  type  or  some  other  type. 


Substance  has  come  to  have  a  distinct  scientific  meaning 
in  modern  times.  So  far  as  it  is  possible  to  revive  the  Spi- 
nozistic  conception  of  substance,  it  would  now  amount  to  the 
epistemological  postulate  of  totality,  viz.  the  facts  are  part 
of  one  world  in  such  a  way  that  every  fact  can,  under  certain 
conditions,  make  a  difference  to  other  facts.1  What  those  con- 
ditions are,  it  is  for  science  to  investigate.  The  differences 
must  also  be  capable  of  becoming  differences  to  a  reflective  con- 
sciousness under  certain  conditions,  in  order  to  concern  us. 

These  differences  are  capable  of  being  systematized  into 
certain  attributes  —  summa  genera  of  differences  not  further 
reducible.  My  reflections  have  led  me  to  believe  that  there 
are  five  such  attributes,  irreducible  to  terms  of  each  other, 
viz.  stuff  or  energy,  time,  space,  consciousness,  and  form. 
Future  investigations  will  have  to  determine  how  far  these 
are  ultimate  attributes  and  whether  there  are  others. 

'See  "Truth  and  Reality,"  Chapter  VII,  pp.  133-138. 
385 


386  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

It  is  true  that  such  attributes  are  abstractions  from  the  total 
matrix  of  reality.  But  to  say  that  they  are  abstractions  does  not 
mean  that  they  are  ideal  or  phenonemal  in  the  sense  that  they 
belie  reality.  Without  abstraction  we  can  have  no  science  of 
reality.  These  attributes  are  genuine  aspects  of  reality  if  we 
must  recognize  them  as  such  in  the  procedure  of  experience. 

The  classical  discussion  of  attributes  goes  back  to  Spinoza. 
Spinoza  makes  causal  difference,  as  well  as  conceptual,  de- 
pend upon  the  possession  of  a  common  attribute  on  the  part 
of  the  contents.  He  even  goes  farther  and  reduces  the  causal 
relation  to  the  conceptual:  "If  things  have  nothing  in  com- 
mon, it  follows  that  one  cannot  be  apprehended  by  means  of 
the  other  and,  therefore,  cannot  be  the  cause  of  the  other."  l 
This  evidently  is  a  confusion  of  causal  dependence  with  logical 
dependence  —  a  confusion  of  which  later  idealism  has  so  often 
been  guilty.  With  Spinoza  this  identification  easily  follows  from 
the  ambiguity  of  his  parallel  attributes,  as  we  shall  see  later. 

The  same  reality,  according  to  Spinoza,  figures  in  different 
attributes.  Thus  substance  must  figure  as  both  thought  and 
extension.  It  must  also  figure  in  infinite  other  ways  not  in- 
cluded in  experience.  Thus  substance  must  possess  not  only 
all  the  attributes  of  which  there  is  evidence,  but  infinite  others. 
The  more  reality,  the  more  determinations.  Hence,  complete 
reality  must  have  infinite  determinations. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  that  Spinoza  is  inconsistent 
with  his  own  thesis,  that  every  fact  within  reality  must  be 
conceived  with  reference  to  a  context,  or,  as  he  would  put 
it,  must  have  a  common  attribute  with  the  rest  of  reality. 
He  is  inconsistent,  first,  as  regards  the  relation  between  thought 
and  extension,  for  extension  must  be  conceived,  and  so  must 
be  capable  of  making  a  difference  to  thought.  To  be  indif- 
ferent or  parallel  to  thought  would  be  to  be  without  significance. 
He  is  still  more  inconsistent  as  regards  his  infinite  attributes. 
These,  by  hypothesis,  make  no  difference  to  thought,  and  yet 
are  assumed.  On  the  contrary,  in  so  far  as  we  make  an  a  priori 
assumption,  we  must  start  with  a  finite  number  of  attributes. 
Else  knowledge  becomes  impossible.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we 
have  a  right  to  assume  only  as  many  attributes  as  make  a 

1  Spinoza,  "Ethics,"  Part  I,  Prop.  iii. 


GENERAL  SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES       387 

difference  to  judging  or  reflective  experience.  The  question 
whether  these  are  altered  by  being  known  can  have  no  mean- 
ing, since  it  is  only  for  reflective  experience  that  attributes  have 
significance.  We  must  assume  that  the  attributes  are  what 
they  are  consistently  known-as  in  progressive  human  conduct. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  extension,  with  the 
geometrical  qualities  it  implies  in  Spinoza,  cannot  be  made 
an  independent  attribute  apart  from  the  energetic  context  in 
which  a  thing  figures,  including  our  perceptual  organic  con- 
text. Extension  is  as  much  a  quality  as  is  color  or  tone.  To  be 
sure  the  quality  of  extension  may  be  said  to  exist  in  contexts 
independent  of  experience.  But  extension,  to  be  known  at  any 
rate,  must  figure  in  the  context  of  our  perceptual  consciousness. 
And  if  so  it  cannot  be  parallel  to  experience  in  Spinoza's  sense 
of  forming  an  exclusive  and  complete  world  of  its  own. 

Spinoza  himself  was  far  from  consistent  in  the  relative 
emphasis  he  put  upon  the  two  attributes.  When  he  dealt 
with  the  problem  of  knowledge,  he  was  inclined  to  regard 
mind  as  the  mere  consciousness  of  the  actions  of  the  body 
—  idea  corporis.  He  at  least  came  dangerously  near  being 
a  materialistic  realist.  As  he  puts  it:  "The  object  of  the 
idea  constituting  the  human  mind  is  the  body,  and  the  body 
as  it  actually  exists."1  And  again:  "The  human  mind  is 
the  very  idea  or  knowledge  of  the  human  body."  2  No  wonder 
then  that  "  the  order  and  connection  of  ideas  is  the  same  as  the 
order  and  connection  of  things,"3  or  as  he  puts  it  elsewhere, 
"  as  the  order  and  connection  of  causes."  4  It  follows,  also, 
that  his  theory  of  association  must  be  strictly  physiological : 
"  Memory  is  simply  a  certain  association  of  ideas  involving 
the  nature  of  things  outside  the  human  body,  which  association 
arises  in  the  mind  according  to  the  order  and  association  of 
the  modifications  of  the  human  body."  5  This  materialistic 
tendency  is  seen  also  in  his  physiological  theory  of  emotions : 
"Whatsoever  increases  or  diminishes,  helps  or  hinders  the  power 
of  activity  in  our  body,  the  idea  thereof  increases  or  diminishes, 
helps  or  hinders  the  power  of  thought  in  our  mind."  6  It  fol- 

1  Part  II,  Prop.  xiii.  s  Part  II,  Prop.  xix. 

3  Part  II,  Prop.  vii.  4  Part  II,  Prop.  xix. 

6  Part  II,  Prop,  xviii,  note.  •  Part  III,  Prop.  xi. 


388  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

lows,  on  this  view,  that  our  knowing  the  object  does  not  in  any 
wise  alter  the  object,  though  our  ideas  may  be  inadequate, 
fragmentary  or  confused.  Such  privation  of  knowledge  is  falsity. 
Knowledge,  when  clear  and  distinct,  takes  account  of  the  ob- 
ject as  it  really  is  in  its  own  eternal  system  of  relations  which 
Spinoza  calls  God.  Materialistic  realists  of  to-day  have  re- 
peated both  the  theory  and  inconsistency  of  Spinoza,  for  while 
holding  that  mind  is  just  the  awareness  of  the  body,  he  finds  it 
hard  to  rule  out  mental  facts  as  such  with  their  own  unique 
relations. 

What  blinded  Spinoza  to  his  epistemological  materialism 
was  doubtless  his  play  on  words.  Thus  he  argues,  as  we 
have  seen,  that  mind  is  the  consciousness  of  the  body.  But 
he  argues  further  that  "this  idea  of  the  mind  is  united  to  the 
mind  in  the  same  way  as  the  mind  is  united  to  the  body."  1 
He  thus,  after  telling  us  that  "the  object  of  our  mind  is  the 
body  as  it  exists,  and  nothing  else,"  substantializes  this  idea 
of  the  body  as  having  a  "  distinctive  quality  " 2  of  its  own.  This 
process  can  then  be  repeated  on  the  idea  of  the  idea,  etc.,  ad 
infinitum.  But  the  fact  is  that  there  is  no  new  content  pro- 
vided for  in  this  repetition.  It  is  purely  a  trick  of  language. 
We  remain  where  we  started,  with  mind  as  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  bodily  modifications.  That  we  know  that  we 
know,  in  any  case,  only  signifies  that  the  attitude  of  knowing 
brings  its  characteristic  feeling  of  belief  with  it,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  successful. 

When  Spinoza,  on  the  other  hand,  turns  to  the  problem 
of  conduct,  he  becomes  as  idealistic  as  he  is  materialistic  in 
his  epistemology.  He  attributes  all  agency  to  systematic 
thought  and  the  passive  becomes  synonymous  with  the  con- 
fused and  unreal.  For  in  the  case  of  ethical  conduct,  cause 
no  longer  means  physiological  processes,  but  clear  and  dis- 
tinct ideas.  Our  mind  is  active  "in  so  far  as  it  has  adequate 
ideas."  3  "The  passive  states  of  the  mind  depend  solely  on 
inadequate  ideas."4  And  man  can  be  said  "to  act  in  obedi- 
ence to  virtue"  only  "in  so  far  as  he  is  determined  for  the 
action  because  he  understands."  Finally,  the  mind's  highest 

1  Spinoza,  "Ethics,"  Part  II,  Prop.  xxi.  2  Part  II,  Prop,  xxi,  note. 

3  Part  III,  Prop.  i.  4  Part  III,  Prop.  iii. 


GENERAL   SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES       389 

knowledge  and  highest  virtue  is  to  know  God.  And  to  know 
God  is  to  love  God  and  to  love  him  with  "that  very  love  where- 
by God  loves  himself,"  l  "wherein  our  salvation  or  blessedness 
or  freedom  consists." 

Thus  Spinoza  halts  between  divided  motives.  In  episte- 
mology  he  tries,  in  opposition  to  the  occasionalists  with  their 
miraculous  correspondence  between  the  physical  world  and  the 
mental  world,  to  simplify  his  problem  by  making  physical  ob- 
jects with  their  relations  the  only  real  contents  and  agencies, 
while  mind  is  reduced  to  a  mere  spectator.  In  ethics  he  saves 
the  significance  of  conduct  by  making  mind  as  reason  or  "clear 
and  distinct  ideas,"  the  real  agent.  The  world  of  impulse  and 
sense  becomes  the  world  of  passivity.  He  is  thus  at  the  same 
time,  though  for  different  purposes,  an  epistemological  ma- 
terialist and  an  ethical  idealist.  Spinoza's  logic,  in  either  case, 
leaves  us  only  one  attribute  —  one  complete  system  whether 
of  matter  or  thought. 

Modern  science,  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  allowed  to  pursue 
its  own  task,  unhampered  by  metaphysical  suppositions, 
whether  of  the  materialistic  or  idealistic  sort,  has  always  in- 
sisted upon  as  many  attributes  or  independent  variables  as 
the  facts  seem  to  require.  These  seem  to  be  three  for  natural 
science :  space,  time,  and  energy.  The  conception  of  energy 
has  gradually  supplanted  the  conception  of  matter  as  a  uni- 
versal ideal  of  description.  Matter  is  applicable  only  within 
a  limited  field.  It  is  not  applicable,  for  example,  to  electricity ; 
while  energy  with  its  equivalences  of  transformation  can  be 
made  to  cover  the  whole  extent  of  process,  material  and  im- 
material, physical  and  psychological. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  natural  science  has  found  it  neces- 
sary to  work  with  these  three  attributes,  it  has  failed  to  de- 
fine them  in  any  clear  way.  The  desire  for  simplification 
has  always  made  itself  felt.  Thus  space  and  time  have  some- 
times been  regarded  as  pure  quantity.  But  if  space  and  time  are 
pure  quantity,  how  can  they  be  given  distinct  meaning?  We 
must  look  for  the  differentia  of  these  attributes,  as  they  are 
in  fact  implied  in  our  attitudes  to  the  world  of  processes  with 
which  science  deals.  Not  the  serial  tools  which  they  have  in 

1  Part  V,  Prop,  xxxvi. 


390  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

common,  but  their  specific  character,  is  what  we  must  try  to 
make  clear.  Certainly,  as  pure  quantity,  time  and  space  are 
indistinguishable  from  each  other  and  from  quantity  in  general. 
While  it  is  convenient  to  reduce  time  and  space  to  pure  quan- 
tity for  certain  artificial  purposes  of  prediction,  this  should 
not  blind  us  to  their  true  character  in  the  world  which  we 
intend  thus  to  simplify. 

Not  only  has  the  attempt  been  made  to  reduce  time  and 
space  to  pure  quantity,  but  the  same  attempt  has  been  made 
in  regard  to  mass.  Thus  Karl  Pearson  would  reduce  mass  to 
acceleration.  But  if  mass  and  energy  are  pure  quantity  how 
can  we  get  the  different  units  with  which  quantity  must  deal? 
These  units,  obviously,  mean  something  different,  according  as 
we  are  concerned  with  chemical  elements  or  electric  potentials 
or  neural  reactions.  But  this  only  shows  the  confusion  that 
has  been  too  prevalent  in  the  analysis  of  scientific  concepts. 

Moreover,  while  natural  science,  in  its  task  of  simplifying 
and  anticipating  the  world  of  perception,  has  been  forced  to 
emphasize  the  above  attributes,  there  are  other  attributes 
which,  though  neglected,  are  nevertheless  implied  in  the  whole 
procedure  of  natural  science.  Thus  the  attribute  of  conscious- 
ness —  the  condition  of  the  unique  relation  to  mind  of  being 
experienced  or  interesting,  in  short  the  awareness  of  a  world, 
with  its  complexity  —  has  been  neglected  by  the  natural 
scientist.  This  is  natural  inasmuch  as  this  attribute  is  equally 
present  to  the  whole  field  of  problems  with  which  he  deals, 
and,  therefore,  for  his  specific  purpose  can  be  neglected.  He 
has  set  himself  the  task  of  dealing  with  a  specific  part  of  ex- 
perience, not  with  experience  as  such. 

Again  natural  science  assumes  that  its  facts  can  be  formu- 
lated into  a  system,  i.e.  that  they  can  be  explained  in  terms 
of  a  finite  number  of  simple  principles.  It  implies  the  reality 
of  logical  form  or  that  the  laws  of  thought  are  also  the  laws  of 
things.  This  obviously  is  not  deducible  from  the  attributes 
of  space,  time,  and  energy,  but  is  a  presupposition  or  ideal 
which  is  implied  in  all  our  cognitive  endeavor.  It  holds  at 
any  rate  in  the  part  of  the  universe  which  is  molded  by  our 
will ;  and  if  science  is  to  be  possible,  this  presupposition  must 
hold  in  the  universe  at  large. 


GENERAL   SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES       391 

II 

It  must  be  obvious,  from  this  survey  of  the  results  of  the 
past,  what  our  problem  is.  And  while  the  inquiry  did  not 
start  from  the  assumptions  of  science,  it  must  be  a  matter  of 
more  than  curious  coincidence  that  the  metaphysical  needs 
and  the  scientific  needs  point  in  the  same  direction,  even  though 
the  former  set  a  much  more  comprehensive  and  articulate 
program.  Applying  the  pragmatic  criterion,  that  we  must 
assume  only  such  realities  as  can  make  differences  to  our  reflec- 
tive procedure,  we  must  try  to  make  clear  what  are  the  ulti- 
mate types  of  differences  which  reality  makes  to  our  reflective 
conduct,  or,  expressed  in  subjective  terms,  what  ways  of  taking 
or  evaluating  our  world  prove  finally  effective  in  our  under- 
standing and  appreciation  of  it.  Such  types  of  differences  we 
shall  call  by  the  classic  name  of  attributes.  I  shall  now  try,  in 
brief,  to  define  these  attributes  —  the  summa  genera  in  the 
reflective  evaluation  of  the  character  of  our  world. 

Being 

First  a  word  about  the  attribute  of  "being,"  as  it  has  been 
called  since  Parmenides.  By  " being"  we  mean  the  stuff 
character  of  reality.  This  stuff  is  capable  of  making  definite 
differences  under  statable  conditions  to  other  stuff.  This 
dynamic  continuity  of  stuff,  with  its  equivalences,  we  call 
energy.  The  stuff  that  has  been  emphasized  by  modern  ideal- 
ism is  meaning  stuff  —  our  reflective  purposes.  These  con- 
stitute one  type  of  stuff,  and  must  be  taken  account  of  as  of 
final  importance  for  our  appreciating  and  understanding  of 
the  world.  They  enable  us  to  differentiate  the  processes  and 
spread  them  out  in  series.  Similarity,  difference,  causality, 
reciprocity,  etc.,  as  general  categories  or  modes  of  functioning 
must  be  part  of  this  account  of  stuff. 

In  order  to  make  a  difference  to  experience,  reality  need  not 
necessarily  be  reflective.  On  the  contrary,  reflective  experience 
will  be  seen  to  be  dependent  to  a  large  extent  upon  non-reflec- 
tive processes.  The  meaning  of  the  object  reflected  upon  de- 
pends largely  upon  its  unnoticed  background.  There  are  three 
ways  in  which  attention  may  be  dependent  upon  unnoticed 


392  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

facts.  Thus  processes,  not  attended  to,  make  up  the  larger 
associative  context,  the  background  of  feeling  and  tendency, 
of  the  object.  The  different  meaning  of  man  or  evolution  to 
the  scientist  and  to  the  common  man  is  largely  in  the  "  fringe." 
Or  the  unnoticed  may  be  instrumental  to  the  activity  of  at- 
tention without  itself  being  attended  to.  For  example,  the 
words  on  the  page  that  we  read.  We  have  a  different  conscious- 
ness when  we  are  attending  to  the  meaning  of  the  words  from 
what  we  have  when  we  make  the  words  themselves  the 
object.  There  may  be  processes,  however,  which  are  entirely 
irrelevant  to  the  purposive  consciousness  of  the  moment,  as 
well  as  unnoticed  by  it.  Thus  the  pressure  of  our  clothes,  the 
furniture  of  the  room,  the  temperature,  etc.,  even  though  not 
attended  to,  make  a  difference  to  our  consciousness  which  we 
can  easily  see  by  an  alteration  of  these  processes.  We  have  a 
very  different  consciousness  in  reading  a  book  out  of  doors  un- 
der the  open  sky  from  what  we  have  in  reading  the  same  book 
in  our  own  study,  though  in  either  case  we  may  not  be  attend- 
ing to  the  setting.  If  we  want  one  name  for  all  these  various 
unnoticed  mental  processes  I  would  suggest  subattentive,1 
instead  of  subconscious,  which  at  best  is  misleading. 

Not  only  are  there  mental  processes  beyond  the  circle  of 
reflective  thought  and  making  a  difference  to  it ;  there  are  also 
processes  which  we  cannot  speak  of  as  conscious  experience 
at  all,  which  still  make  a  difference  to  our  reflective  meaning. 
That  I  can  take  up  to-day  the  problems  of  yesterday  or  last 
year  and  thus  connect  again  with  my  own  past,  seems  to  be 
dependent  upon  a  continuity  of  processes  which  are  not  them- 
selves conscious.  The  unity  of  the  passing  thought  can  ac- 
count for  the  continuity  of  our  consciousness  only  while  we  are 
conscious.  It  cannot  bridge  over  the  gap  between  going  to  sleep 
and  waking  up  again,  or  account  for  the  bringing  back  of  ex- 
periences which  have  not  been  active  in  the  meantime.  What 
these  processes  are  in  their  own  character  must  be  determined 
by  science  according  to  its  convenience.  It  must  simplify  them 
and  differentiate  them  according  to  our  needs  in  meeting  the 

1  This  term  was  suggested  in  an  article  in  the  Jour.  Phil.  Psychol.  and  Sci. 
Meth.,  1907.  It  has  later  been  advocated  by  Dr.  Marshall  in  the  same  journal, 
but  the  term  subconscious  seems  to  have  come  to  stay. 


GENERAL  SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES       393 

complexity  of  our  world.  Mere  a  priori  classification  can  count 
for  nothing. 

One  thing  is  certain,  and  that  is  the  close  relation  between 
what  we  call  physical  energy  and  our  mental  activities.  It 
is  a  commonplace  that  a  cup  of  hot  coffee  may  change  our 
emotional  atitude  towards  the  world.  But  I  suppose  we 
would  not  on  that  account  be  guilty  of  speaking  of  coffee  as 
emotion  stuff.  Psychotherapy,  again,  has  made  us  familiar 
with  the  differences  that  mental  processes  can  make  to  the 
physiological.  We  have  gotten  over  the  notion  that  one  pro- 
cess in  order  to  make  a  difference  to  another  must  be  of  the 
same  kind.  Chemical  energy  is  not  the  same  as  electrical, 
though  capable  of  making  differences  to  it.  So  different 
are  the  conceptual  tools  which  we  need  in  each  case  that  elec- 
trical energy  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  immaterial.  This, 
I  take  it,  only  signifies  that  the  conception  of  gravitation  mass 
is  inapplicable.  The  difficulty  of  finding  a  common  denomi- 
nator between  psychic  processes  and  physiological  seems  still 
greater,  yet  they  are  clearly  interdependent.  All  we  can 
hope  to  do  in  science,  and  science  must  here  be  our  last  word, 
is  to  show  definitely  the  conditions  under  which  the  transfor- 
mations take  place.  The  following  of  the  minute  internal 
transitions  may  forever  lie  beyond  us. 

Looking  at  the  stuff  character  with  reference  to  the  impli- 
cations of  the  reflective  moment,  we  have  found  it  convenient 
to  look  at  it  as  of  three  levels.  These  levels  can  be  seen  in  a 
cross  section,  as  it  were,  of  every  reflective  moment,  the  re- 
flective consciousness  showing  its  dependence  upon  marginal 
or  unnoticed  experience  and  this  again  upon  processes  to  which 
the  category  of  experience  cannot  be  ascribed,  and  which 
we  speak  of  as  dispositions. 

Stuff  has  the  advantage  that  it  can  be  observed  directly. 
It  is  an  object  of  immediate  perception  and  judgment.  The 
other  attributes  of  which  we  shall  speak,  viz.  space,  time, 
consciousness  and  form  can  only  be  observed  or  make  a  differ- 
ence to  our  judgment  through  the  difference  they  make  to  the 
stuff  structure  of  the  world,  including  our  own  purposes. 

I  shall  speak  of  these  attributes  as  non-being  attributes, 
not  because  they  are  less  real,  but  because  they  are  not  stat- 


394  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

able  as  stuff.  In  the  language  of  philosophy  the  stuff  charac- 
ter has  appropriated  the  term,  "being."  These  non-being 
attributes  can  be  defined  or  differentiated  from  each  other  by 
the  difference  which  they  make  to  the  active  purposes  of  the 
self. 

Time 

It  has  been  customary  since  Kant  to  deal  with  the  time  and 
space  attributes  as  series  and  therefore  to  insist  upon  their 
ideal  character.  I  have  insisted,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the 
serial  character  is  relative,  and  that  the  real  differentia  of 
these  concepts  must  be  found  in  characters  of  reality  which 
are  not  themselves  serial,  but  furnish  the  rationale  of  the  serial 
construction.  If  you  speak  of  time  and  space,  for  example, 
as  pure  quantity,  there  remains,  as  we  have  already  pointed 
out,  the  problem  of  stating  the  relation  of  time  and  space  to 
the  general  concept  of  quantity,  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  show 
their  differentia  with  reference  to  each  other,  on  the  other 
hand;  that  is,  the  whole  problem  of  definition  remains.  In 
what,  in  other  words,  lies  the  difference  in  our  purposive  atti- 
tude in  evaluating  space  and  time? 

To  speak  first  of  time.  What  difference  does  time  make 
to  the  realization  of  our  purposes?  Energy,  we  have  seen, 
stands  for  constancy  of  process  —  for  stable  types  of  prediction. 
And  there  is  a  degree  of  constancy  or  we  could  not  have  science. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  characteristic  of  our  concrete 
world  that  it  does  not  stay  put.  We  must  recognize  fleeting- 
ness —  growth  and  decay  in  much  of  reality.  Constancy,  in 
our  practical  experience,  seems  at  best  relative.  Hence,  we 
must  predicate  the  attribute  of  time.  It  is  precisely  because 
the  universe  is  in  perpetual  flux,  that  the  task  of  science  —  the 
singling  out  of  certain  relevant  identities  which  enable  us  to 
find  our  way  amidst  the  ever  novel  and  different  —  becomes  so 
significant.  In  the  frozen  block-world  of  Parmenides  we  should 
have  no  need  of  science.  The  constancy  aspect  is  limited  by 
the  flux  aspect.  And  while  we  must  recognize  the  former  as 
real,  it  seems  but  meager  in  extent  beside  the  flowing  world  of 
protean  detail. 

While,  again,  it  is  convenient,  for  certain  abstract  purposes 


GENERAL  SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES      395 

of  description,  to  reduce  time  to  quantity,  this  must  not  blind 
us  to  the  nature  of  the  processes  which  we  intend  and  from 
whose  essential  character  we  have  abstracted  for  the  partial 
purpose.  I  insist  that  what  we  mean  by  the  differences  time 
makes  to  our  purposes  is  not  statable  as  mere  units  of  chro- 
nology—  the  intervals  of  the  clock.  There  must  be  flow, 
movement,  or  we  would  not  go  to  the  trouble  of  inventing 
units.  This  movement,  even  in  the  measurement  of  time, 
ever  belies  our  static  definitions.1  Suppose  that  nothing  really 
happened  —  no  running  down  of  energy,  no  being  born  or 
growing  old,  no  change  in  values.  In  such  a  world  we  should 
indeed  declare  time  to  be  no  more,  to  make  no  real  difference. 
Or  rather  we  should  have  no  concept  of  time  at  all.  What 
makes  time  real  to  us  is  that  it  necessitates  new  judgments, 
whether  because  of  transformation  and  novelty  in  the  pur- 
posive meaning  which  evaluates  or  in  the  object  which  is  eval- 
uated. So  long  as  this  is  the  case  we  cannot  express  reality 
in  merely  static  categories.  Our  quantitative  devices  are  in- 
struments to  adjust  ourselves  to  this  concrete  flow. 

It  matters  not,  for  this  purpose,  how  you  ultimately  con- 
ceive the  stuff  of  the  world.  You  may  conceive  the  process 
as  the  rearrangement  of  physical  entities.  Even  then  you 
must  have  something  besides  the  bits  and  their  position  to 
account  for  the  process  of  the  perceptual  world.  I  do  not  see, 
myself,  how  the  bits  can  be  indifferent  to  the  rearrangement 
they  must  suffer,  except  as  they  are  recognized  as  merely  our 
conceptual  models.  But  whether  you  conceive  the  stuff  of 
reality  in  the  last  analysis  as  atoms  and  electrons  or  as  purposive 
systems  of  meanings,  the  question  remains :  When  you  have 
thus  conceived  reality,  why  should  it  slip  away?  Why  does 
it  not  remain  chained  in  the  present,  as  Parmenides  would  say  ? 
Why  should  there  be  rearrangement,  whether  a  running  up  or 
a  running  down  process?  As  the  world  has  no  beginning, 
neither  process  can  be  absolute,  for  then  the  world  must  have 
run  its  course  countless  ages  ago.  The  theory  that  the  world 
tends  to  an  equilibrium  or  an  equal  distribution  of  heat,  as 
implied  in  Spencer's  formula  and  the  second  law  of  thermo- 
dynamics, presupposes  a  finite  creation  of  the  world. 

1  See  "Time  and  Reality,"  Psychol  Rev.  Mon.  Series,  no.  26,  pp.  23  and  24. 


396  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

If  you  say,  again,  that  the  present  rearrangement  is  the 
result  of  previous  rearrangement,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum,  why 
should  there  be  rearrangement  at  all?  Why  should  not  our 
positional  values  remain  fixed?  Why  should  something  creep 
into  our  equations,  whether  subjectively  or  objectively,  so  as 
to  make  them  false?  If  you  insist  that  reality  remains  fixed, 
there  at  least  remains  the  appearance  of  rearrangement  in  the 
subject,  and  that  is  part  of  reality  and  must  be  met. 

Given,  on  the  other  hand,  time  as  a  real  character  of  the 
world,  you  can  account  for  the  transformation  of  values,  the 
instability  of  positions  or  the  falsifying  of  our  judgments, 
which  is  what  it  all  amounts  to  in  the  end.  You  can  also 
furnish  the  rationale  for  our  serial  construction  to  meet  such  a 
character  of  the  world,  while  you  can  not  derive  the  time  char- 
acter from  the  concept  of  series.  The  construction  of  time 
infinities  is  a  secondary  affair,  and  can  neither  explain  nor  in- 
validate the  real  time  character.  We  should  not  say  that 
things  move  in  time.  This  is  putting  the  cart  before  the 
horse.  Our  serial  construction  is  made  necessary,  on  the 
other  hand,  because  of  the  transformation  of  our  facts  and 
values.  Time  furnishes  the  limiting  value  of  certain  serial 
constructions,  such  as  past  and  future,  without  which  they 
would  be  meaningless. 

It  is  inverting  the  real  situation  to  speak  of  contents  as 
carried  over  from  one  moment  to  another  or  as  passing  in  and 
out  of  time.  What  really  takes  place  is  that  some  contents 
remain  constant,  others  come  and  go.  Our  psychological 
moments  chase  each  other  and  fade  like  the  shadows  on  the 
mountains  on  a  cloudy  day,  yet  withal  some  constancy  of 
outline  —  of  tendency  and  content  —  remains  by  means  of 
which  we  can  realize  their  fading  and  fleeting  existence.  The 
more  permanent  contents  furnish  the  background  upon  which 
the  fleeting  ones  appear  and  disappear.  Some  of  the  latter 
observe  a  certain  rhythm.  In  the  case  of  the  earth  clock, 
and  our  artificial  time  pieces  based  upon  it,  we  have  socialized 
this  rhythm,  relative  though  this  is  in  the  end  to  the  process. 
Then  we  use  this  rhythm  to  measure  the  enduring  contents, 
with  their  passing  or  accumulating  increments.  Having  in- 
vented intervals  we  can  divide  these  at  will,  even  to  infinity. 


GENERAL   SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES      397 

We  then  invert  the  process  and  imagine  that  the  contents 
run  through  our  artificial  divisions.  The  latter,  however,  have 
no  effect  on  the  real  overlapping  or  change.  They  are  an  after- 
thought. 

Space 

And  now  a  word  about  space.  If  time  makes  the  difference 
of  transformation  to  our  concrete  realities,  space  conditions 
translation.  If  time  makes  an  intrinsic  difference  to  our 
processes,  space  makes  an  external  difference.  The  character 
of  space,  in  other  words,  is  such  that  it  does  not  interfere  with 
movement.  If  space  offered  resistance,  geometry,  which  is 
based  on  free  mobility,  *  would  be  impossible.  It  matters 
not  for  our  purposes  whether  space  be  actually  empty  or  not. 
It  is  convenient,  for  scientific  and  practical  purposes,  to  posit 
space  as  a  limit  of  exhaustion  and  as  the  absence  of  resistance, 
i.e.  to  assume  a  space  zero.  Only  thus  can  we  state  Newton's 
first  law  of  motion.  Moreover,  if  we  can  approximate  to 
such  a  limit,  it  must  be  as  objectively  real  as  though  we  had 
actually  attained  it. 

We  cannot  rule  out  space  by  mere  a  priori  considerations. 
Thought  must  follow  the  facts  and  not  dictate  to  them.  What- 
ever we  must  acknowledge  as  real  cannot  fail  to  be  conceiv- 
able. And  pure  space  seems  to  be  more  than  a  conceptual 
limit.  Interstellar  space  seems  to  be  practically  pure.  The 
rays  of  light  are,  so  far  as  we  know,  not  interfered  with  in  any 
way  until  they  strike  solid  bodies.  Michelson's  careful  meas- 
urements indicate  that  the  earth  rotates  as  though  it  moved 
in  empty  space.  What  is  true  in  the  large  may  be  equally  true 
in  the  minute.  Thus  the  compressibility  of  the  atom  as  in- 
dicated by  the  experiments  of  T.  W.  Richards  seems  to  point 
to  space  intervals  in  the  elementary  structure  of  the  universe. 
Whether  such  observations  as  regards  the  existence  of  pure 
snace  prove  final  or  not,  this  does  not  invalidate  the  reality  of 
space  as  the  condition  of  the  energetic  interactions  in  space. 

A  more  positive  characteristic  of  space  than  that  of  free 
mobility  is  that  of  distance  or  externality  of  energetic  centers. 

1  For  a  more  complete  analysis  of  the  properties  of  real  space,  see  chapter 
XIII,  pp.  234-243. 


398  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

As  distance,  space  conditions  the  equations  of  the  astronomer 
and  the  realization  of  our  human  social  purposes.  For  even 
though  our  purposes  do  not  occupy  space,  they  nevertheless 
operate  in  space  and  space  makes  a  difference  to  their  realiza- 
tion. If  from  Kansas  I  wish  to  communicate  with  a  friend 
across  the  sea,  it  makes  a  definite  difference  as  regards  the  kind 
of  communication  and  the  sort  of  relations  that  are  possible 
between  us,  that  he  is  some  thousands  of  miles  away. 

Spatial  distance  does  not  of  course  prevent  energetic  over- 
lapping of  centers.  In  the  case  of  my  friend  it  is  true  that  my 
purpose  to  communicate  may  become  continuous  with  cer- 
tain physiological  processes,  and  these  in  turn  may  become 
continuous  with  certain  physical  energies  which  in  turn  span 
the  distance  between  me  and  my  friend.  But  the  overlap- 
ping is  different  and  the  realization  of  the  social  purpose  is 
different  because  of  the  distance.  No  mystical  monism  can 
remedy  this  difference.  No  mere  intellectual  change  of  point 
of  view  can  alter  the  practical  situation  in  which  space  figures 
as  one  condition. 

We  must,  of  course,  be  careful  not  to  confuse  the  real  space 
condition  with  our  psychological  or  logical  perspectives  with 
their  ideal  distinctness  or  externality  of  parts.  Things  cannot 
move  in  an  ideal  system.  Serial  space  is  a  construction  —  an 
after-picture  to  symbolize  the  relations  of  things,  whether  phys- 
ical masses  or  geometrical  figures  or  self-conscious  individuals, 
in  zero  space.  If  space  were  merely  an  ideal  system,  distance 
and  free  mobility  would  both  be  figurative  without  any  reality 
for  the  figure.  If  we  admit  a  real  zero  space,  we  can  easily 
account  for  phenomenal  or  serial  space,  but  not  vice  versa. 

I  grant  cheerfully  that  all  our  quantitative  measurements 
are  relative.  Our  serial  constructions,  our  geometrical  as  our 
chronological  models,  are  our  tools  by  means  of  which  we 
strive  to  meet  the  actual  nature  of  the  world.  But  I  do  not 
see  how  any  mere  contradictions  in  our  concepts  can  rid  us 
of  characters  of  reality  which  condition  all  our  real  purposes, 
whether  as  regards  transformation  or  translation.  We  must 
penetrate  beneath  the  apparent  contradictions  and  revise  our 
concepts  in  conformity  with  the  reality  which  they  mean  to  ex^ 
press.  Concepts  must  be  our  servants,  not  our  masters. 


GENERAL   SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES      399 

Consciousness 

It  is  convenient  to  treat  consciousness,  the  condition  of  aware- 
ness or  interest,  as  a  unique  attribute.  It  is  absurd  to  sup- 
pose that  our  conative  attitudes  and  organized  meanings  be- 
come atoms  and  molecules  when  we  are  not  aware  of  them; 
they  change,  not  in  stuff  but  in  value  when  they  are  illumined 
for  an  instant  by  interest.  Consciousness  is  a  new  character 
added  to  our  conative  purposes  under  certain  conditions  of 
intensity  and  readjustment.  The  conative  purposes  themselves 
may  remain  as  constant  as  individual  existence.  They  may 
even  become  permanent  parts  of  social  history. 

Consciousness  or  awareness  is  a  neutral  light.  It  does  not 
create  distance  nor  does  it  create  meaning.  It  may  be  an 
awareness  of  meaning  or  an  awareness  of  sensation.  In  our 
developed  experience  it  is  both.  To  make  such  awareness 
possible,  there  must  preexist,  as  conditions,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  object-context  of  which  we  become  aware,  and  on  the  other 
hand,  the  system  of  conative  tendency  which  forms  the  sub- 
jective condition  of  awareness.  But  neither  the  object-con- 
text nor  the  system  of  tendency  is,  as  such,  awareness.  When 
interest  is  lighted,  under  its  peculiar  conditions,  a  new  relation- 
ship to  the  organism  originates  which  cannot  be  reduced  into 
other  existential  relations  such  as  temporal,  spatial,  causal, 
nor  into  logical  or  aesthetic  relations,  though  these  now  come 
to  have  subjective  value. 

Consciousness  thus  conditions  the  relation  of  being  felt. 
It  converts  what  otherwise  would  be  a  type  of  mere  inter- 
action into  contemplation.  What  is  contemplated  may  be  an 
external  meaning  —  a  proposition  in  Euclid.  It  may  be  an 
electrical  shock.  It  may  be  a  relation  such  as  distance.  What 
is  thus  contemplated  need  not  be  experience  stuff.  It  in- 
cludes not  merely  experience  transition,  but  space  transition. 
It  may  be  any  kind  of  energy  or  relation.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  meaning  may  be  as  objective  or  external  to  consciousness  as 
space.  We  do  not  make  Homer's  meaning  or  the  Sistine  Ma- 
donna, when  we  become  conscious  of  it,  any  more  than  we 
make  the  distance  from  the  earth  to  the  moon  when  we  take 
account  of  it.  Consciousness  in  any  case  is  a  gift  which  for 


400  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

its  condition  presupposes  on  the  one  hand  conative  tendency, 
on  the  other  hand  the  shock  of  a  stimulus  —  a  situation  to  be 
met  whether  intra-  or  extra-organic.  A  mere  continuity  or 
succession  of  objects  is  not  a  consciousness  of  continuity  or 
succession.  Awakened  tendency,  or  interest,  is  also  required. 
And  then  the  content  may  come  in  temporally  discrete  pulses 
of  experience. 

Thus  in  being  conscious  there  are  always  end-terms;  and 
one  of  the  end-terms  must  be  a  conative  system  of  tendencies. 
The  terms  need  not  be  a  logical  subject  and  object.  They 
may  be  blind  instinct  on  the  one  hand,  and  any  fascinating 
stimulus  on  the  other.  But  one  of  the  end-terms  is  always 
conative  in  character.  Consciousness  is  always  an  aspect  of 
the  situation  which  we  call  interest. 

Consciousness  has  been  confused,  on  the  one  hand,  with 
its  conditions,  on  the  other  with  its  species.  It  has,  in  the 
first  case,  been  regarded  by  the  materialist  as  a  product  or 
effect  of  chemico-biological  causes.  But  the  materialist  him- 
self has  admitted  that  it  is  not  comparable  with  what  is  or- 
dinarily meant  by  effect.  It  is  rather  an  epiphenomenon  — 
a  miracle  added  to  the  process,  without  making  any  causal 
difference  to  it.  Oh  the  other  hand,  we  may  with  the  episte- 
mological  idealist  regard  this  awareness  as  everywhere  and 
always  present  and  indissociable  from  the  contents  of  reality. 
But  here  we  are  dealing  with  an  assumption  which  seems  to 
run  counter  to  the  facts  as  known  in  our  finite  experience.  I 
prefer  a  third  alternative,  which  indeed  is  implied  in  the  bank- 
ruptcy of  the  other  two,  in  accounting  for  our  experience.  This 
is  that  consciousness  is  an  attribute  added  to  our  energetic 
relation  of  conative  tendency  and  stimulus  under  certain  con- 
ditions —  a  unique  gift  of  reality  in  its  larger  sense  to  some  of 
the  interactions  of  our  finite  ego.  Since  obeying  regular  laws 
it  is  no  miracle ;  since  an  aspect  of  all  our  waking  experience, 
it  is  no  more  mysterious  than  other  unique  types  of  reality 
such  as  space.  Whether  it  is  an  abstract  and  ontologically 
separable  attribute  of  the  universe  or  is  ever-present  as  an 
aspect  of  a  comprehensive  absolute  experience  does  not  matter 
for  the  problem  in  question.  In  either  case,  what  is  a  gift  to 
our  finite  experience  preexists  as  a  character  of  a  larger  reality. 


GENERAL  SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES      401 

This  character  of  awareness  spans  the  whole  field  of  interest, 
from  the  immediate  interest  of  instinctive  attention,  where  we 
have  the  "mere  awareness  of,"  to  that  of  the  most  elaborate 
apperception  of  "knowledge  about." 

In  the  second  place,  consciousness  has  been  confused  with 
the  species  of  its  content.  It  has  sometimes  been  treated 
as  though  it  meant  exclusively  logical  awareness,  to  the  ruling 
out  of  non-logical  types.  Again  it  has  been  treated  as  though 
it  signified  simply  motor  awareness,  as  opposed  to  ideational. 
But  the  stating  of  such  definitions  is  a  sufficient  refutation  of 
them.  The  awareness  itself  is  quite  colorless.  It  is  the  psy- 
chological processes  which  color  it ;  and  here  there  is  no  reason 
why  one  process  should  be  given  the  preeminence  over  the  rest. 

Form 

I  anticipate  the  most  difficulty  from  the  fifth  attribute  of 
which  I  am  going  to  speak,  viz.  form  or  direction.  We  have 
tried  so  far  to  state  the  universe  in  terms  of  four  attributes, 
those  of  stuff  or  energy,  time,  space,  and  consciousness.  But 
none  of  these  attributes  answers  the  question :  Does  the  pro- 
cess have  direction,  or  is  there  validity  in  the  flux?  This  is  not 
accounted  for  by  stuff,  for  the  stuff  character  does  not  contain 
its  own  "  measure."  It  is  precisely  because  we  recognize  that  the 
process  is  not  what  it  ought  to  be,  because  our  finite  struc- 
tures seem  relative,  that  the  question  of  validity  is  raised.  The 
question  is  not  answerable  in  terms  of  time,  for  time  merely 
means  transformation.  Whether  transformation  towards  chaos 
or  towards  unity  is  not  answered  by  time.  It  is  not  statable 
as  space,  for  while  space  conditions  the  realization  of  meaning, 
it  does  not  make  it  valid.  You  cannot  reduce  the  demand 
for  form  to  mere  mechanical  sequence,  whether  psychical  or 
physical,  conscious  or  unconscious.  There  remains  some- 
how within  us  the  longing  for  order  and  unity,  in  spite  of, 
yea,  because  of,  the  fragmentariness  of  our  finite  meaning. 
The  merely  relative  fails  to  satisfy  us. 

Valid  relations  are  a  distinct  type  or  genus  from  conscious- 
ness with  the  motley  array  of  existences  which  it  reveals.  In 
the  first  place,  our  awareness  may  be  bound  up  with  error  and 
illusion.  That  it  is  largely  so  in  our  experience  is  attested 


402  A  REALISTIC   UNIVERSE 

by  the  whole  story  of  science.  In  the  second  place,  valid  re- 
lations may  exist  without  our  being  conscious  of  them.  We 
do  not  originate  Euclidian  geometry  by  becoming  aware  of  its 
logical  relations.  While  valid  relations  presuppose  mind  and 
also  awareness  at  some  time,  we  do  not  have  to  be  awake  all 
the  time  to  keep  the  argument  valid.  And  the  long  buried 
past,  when  once  brought  to  consciousness,  sometimes  is  found 
to  be  more  valid  than  our  present  cogitations. 

Validity  implies  a  constitution,  different  from  the  sequential 
or  causal,  in  the  light  of  which  we  criticize  that  which  happens 
and  strive  to  establish  clearness  and  distinctness  in  the  midst 
of  the  seemingly  confused  relations  of  experience.  This  ideal- 
ization of  life,  this  attempt  to  establish  the  ought  in  what  is, 
must  be  taken  as  a  unique  type  of  evaluation.  When  we 
insist  that  there  ought  to  be  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness,  in 
spite  of  the  relativity  of  history  and  our  individual  judgments, 
we  have  at  least  implied  a  limit,  a  direction  of  history  which  is 
not  relative.  Else  all  our  judgments  would  be  equally  mean- 
ingless, and  there  could  be  no  degrees  of  worth,  as  in  the  dark 
all  cows  are  gray. 

The  absolute  idealist  insists  that  in  the  absolute  experience 
we  have  such  a  standard.  This  absolute  experience  is  even 
now  shared  by  us.  It  is  this  that  gives  rise  to  our  conscious- 
ness of  fragmentariness,  which  accounts  for  our  finite  sense 
of  failure,  and  of  which  we  are  even  now  conscious  as  the  final 
truth,  the  purpose  eternally  fulfilled.  But  the  irony  of  his- 
tory gives  the  lie  to  any  such  assumption.  The  absolute  it- 
self, as  our  concept,  is  subject  to  the  transmutation  of  time. 
It  is  the  expression  of  the  finite  now.  Each  stage  of  the  process 
must  create  its  own  absolute,  find  its  own  satisfaction.  The 
absolute,  therefore,  is  for  us  at  any  rate  merely  a  logical  ideal. 
Epistemologically,  it  is  relative.  The  concept  of  it,  too,  pre- 
supposes direction  for  such  validity  as  it  has. 

That  the  idea  of  direction  is  valuable  as  a  regulative  idea 
or  limit  cannot  be  doubted.  But  can  we  also  attribute  onto- 
logical  reality  to  the  same?  Or  is  it  merely  a  hypothetical 
limit,  the  index  of  our  ideal  strivings?  It  seems  to  me,  if  it  is 
required  to  give  meaning  to  our  relative  and  fragmentary  pur- 
poses, that  it  must  be  at  least  as  real  as  those  purposes  them- 


GENERAL  SURVEY:    THE  FIVE  ATTRIBUTES       403 

selves.  The  straight  line  must  be  at  least  as  real  as  the  num- 
berless variations  of  curvature  of  which  it  is  the  limit.  And  it 
is  worth  more,  for  without  it  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as 
measure.  And  so  with  our  more  general  ideal  demands,  as 
contrasted  with  the  world  of  existential  processes. 

To  guarantee  the  validity  of  process  or  to  furnish  the  basis 
for  science,  virtue,  and  beauty,  the  form  must  be  selective, 
that  is,  must  somehow  condition  the  survival  of  structures. 
Only  thus  can  it  satisfy  that  demand  for  finality  which  the 
finite  process  at  any  one  time  fails  to  fulfill.  This  does  not 
mean  that  every  item  is  predetermined  by  a  final  cause  or 
Idea.  It  need  only  mean  that,  in  the  changes  and  chances  of 
the  cosmic  process,  in  the  fluctuations  and  mutations  of  life, 
certain  ideals  of  clearness  and  distinctness  are  enforced  by 
the  universe,  however  much  beyond  our  comprehension  such 
operation  may  be.  This  would  accomplish  in  the  large  what 
our  selective  will  as  a  fragment  in  the  evolution  of  the  universe 
strives  to  accomplish  in  the  small. 

That  formal  selection  may  condition  survival  we  know 
from  experience.  Evaluation  in  terms  of  ideals  is  an  impor- 
tant condition  in  social  survival.  Human  beings  are  socially 
approved,  not  so  much  for  their  size,  weight  or  strength,  as 
for  their  satisfying  certain  ethical,  aesthetic,  and  intellectual 
standards.  They  may,  for  example,  be  selected  for  their 
beauty  rather  than  their  strength  and  thus  continue  the  race. 
This  holds  to  a  certain  extent  in  animal  selection  as  well.  And 
in  the  survival  of  plant  life  and  even  of  certain  conditions  of 
inorganic  nature  —  the  configurations  of  hills  and  valleys  within 
our  human  control  —  form  often  plays  the  most  important 
part  in  our  selection.  If  the  universe  is  interpenetrated  and 
controlled  in  the  last  analysis  by  a  master  mind  —  the  ful- 
fillment of  our  ideal  demands  —  formal  value,  rather  than 
quantity  of  energy,  may  be  the  final  basis  of  survival  and 
eternity. 

These  attributes,  while  they  are  ultimate  or  irreducible 
kinds,  differ  from  the  parallelistic  attributes  of  Spinoza  in 
that  they  all  make  a  difference  to  our  creative  purposes,  whether 
they  make  any  differences  to  each  other  or  not.  Hence  they 
do  not  involve  an  epistemological  contradiction.  They  at 


404  A  REALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

least  overlap  as  known.  They  also  overlap  in  other  ways. 
Space  makes  a  definite  difference  to  interacting  energies  in 
space.  Time  again  conditions  the  existence  of  process  at  all. 
Without  it  we  should  have  a  petrified  world.  Consciousness 
makes  subjective  realization  of  a  world  possible,  while  form 
makes  it  possible  to  understand  and  appreciate  such  a  world. 


INDEX 


Absolute,  matter  and  the,  15  S. 

Absolute  idealism,  hypothesis  of,  to 
account  for  experience,  20,  27-32. 

Abstraction,  idealization  as,  310. 

Abstractions,  errors  of,  64. 

Activity,  accounting  for,  in  analysis 
of  mental  processes,  185-188;  con- 
cept of,  under  a  timeless  system, 
252 ;  confusion  of  form  with  the 
concept  of,  329. 

./Esthetic  ideals,  attempts  to  differ- 
entiate between  scientific  and  moral 
ideals  and,  309-311. 

Affection,  one  dimension  of  the  will, 
171. 

Affective  qualities,  character  of  the, 
and  difficulty  of  distinguishing,  168- 
169. 

Alexander,  S.,  definition  of  "mind," 
164;  "On  Sensations  and  Images" 
by,  cited,  166  n. 

Analogy,  theory  of,  regarding  knowl- 
edge of  other  selves,  153. 

Anaxagoras,  on  potential  properties, 
46;  the  Nous  of,  115. 

Angell,  "  Psychology,"  cited,  120  n. 

Animals,   consciousness  in,  143-144. 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  on  individuation,  62. 

Aristotle,  on  metaphysics  as  compared 
with  other  sciences,  xv;  on  the 
pragmatic  significance  of  things,  70 ; 
concept  of  form  of  the  body,  men- 
tioned, 140;  objections  of,  to 
atomists'  conception  of  space,  245; 
character  of  time  as  laid  down  by, 
255;  on  the  difficulty  of  making 
particular  judgments  in  regard  to 
the  future,  297 ;  confusion  of  form 
and  activity  by,  329 ;  view  of 
finalism  regarding  evolution  ac- 
cording to,  362-365  ;  forms,  377. 

Arrhenius,  on  infinity  of  world,  241. 

Art,  metaphysics,  and,  xx-xxi. 

Atomic  realism,  the  ideal  of,  20-27. 

Attention,  consciousness  as  an  ingredi- 
ent of,  139  ;  question  of  dependence 
upon  distribution  of  consciousness, 


141-124;  physical  factors  in,  170- 
171 ;  one  dimension  of  the  will,  171 ; 
concept  of,  under  a  timeless  system, 
252 ;  attempt  at  differentiation  of 
ideals  based  on  relation  to,  311-313  ; 
dependence  of,  upon  unnoticed  facts, 
391-392. 

Attributes,  the  five,  385 ;  classical  dis- 
cussion of,  dating  back  to  Spinoza, 
386 ;  theory  of  Spinoza  concerning, 
386-389;  attitude  of  modern  sci- 
ence toward,  389  ;  three  insisted  upon 
by  modern  science,  389 ;  the  at- 
tribute of  being,  391-394 ;  non-being 
attributes,  393-394 ;  time,  394-397  ; 
space,  397-398 ;  consciousness,  399- 
401 ;  form,  401-403  ;  wherein  these 
attributes  differ  from  the  parallelistic 
attributes  of  Spinoza,  403;  over- 
lapping of,  403-404.  See,  for  further 
discussion,  the  main  divisions  of  the 
book. 

Augustine,  on  mental  processes,  130; 
reference  to,  339. 

Awareness,  consciousness  the  precon- 
dition of,  135-136 ;  metaphysical  dif- 
ference, 136.  See  Consciousness. 

B 

Being,  the  divine  truth  of,  3-5;  re- 
lation of  matter  and  the  absolute 
to,  15  ff. ;  discussion  of,  as  one  of 
the  attributes,  391-394. 

Bergson,  quoted  on  reality  of  things,  67 ; 
position  of,  as  to  time,  259 ;  theory 
concerning  evolution,  365,  366;  on 
matter,  380 ;  law  of  matter,  83. 

Berkeley,  formula  of,  28 ;  on  the  relative 
character  of  extension,  21;  confusion 
of  sensations  and  sense-qualities,  89 ; 
witness,  131. 

Biological  terms,  presuppositions  of 
space  construction  expressed  in,  21  Iff . 

Bode,  B.  H.,  theory  concerning  con- 
sciousness, 120  n. 

Bodily  activity,  relation  of  conscious- 
ness to,  140. 

Body,  potentialities  of,  129. 


405 


406 


INDEX 


Boodin,  John  E.,  "Truth  and  Reality" 
by,  cited  and  quoted,  68,  94,  147, 
385;  articles  by,  cited,  107,  191,  204, 
251,  277,  283,  324,  392,  395. 

Bradley,  cited  concerning  the  reality  of 
relations,  93,  94 ;  logical  relations 
confused  with  energy  relations  by, 
107. 

Broad,  C.  DM  a  reply  to  a  criticism 
by,  76  n. 

Brown,  Thomas,  quoted  on  difference 
between  qualities,  84. 


Causality,  concept  of,  100-103 ;  con- 
cept of  an  energy  system  substi- 
tuted for,  103-105 ;  under  a  timeless 
system,  252. 

Cayley,  reference  to,  217. 

Chicago  School,  creative  contribution 
of  the  cognitive  relation  emphasized 
by,  98  n. ;  functional  view  of  con- 
sciousness expressed  by,  119-120; 
concerning  consciousness,  120  n. 

Clifford,  reference  to,  237. 

Comenius,  quoted  as  to  beginnings  of 
metaphysics,  xiv. 

Companionship,  thought  and,  193-194. 

Conduct,  Spinoza's  attitude  toward 
problem  of,  388. 

Conductivity,  a  physical  property  of 
real  space,  242. 

Consciousness,  the  divine  truth  of,  8- 
9;  the  concept  of,  115  ff. ;  exam- 
ination of  theories  concerning,  115- 
129 ;  and  mind  stuff,  129-133  ;  ques- 
tion of  what  practical  difference  can 
be  made  to  our  world  by,  134 ;  the 
pragmatic  difference  of,  135-141 ; 
the  distribution  of,  141-145;  other 
problems  of,  145-150 ;  question 
whether  a  mental  fact,  164-166; 
as  one  of  the  five  attributes,  385; 
an  attribute  that  has  been  neglected 
by  natural  science,  390;  discussed 
as  an  attribute,  399-401. 

Conservation  of  energy,  law  of,  and  its 
definite  meaning  in  connection  with 
special  energy  systems,  47. 

Conservation  of  mass,  empirical  char- 
acter of  law  of,  48. 

Constancy  of  the  self  and  of  feelings, 
175-180. 

Continuities  between  minds,  mental 
distinguished  from  physical,  191  ff. ; 
two  types,  material  and  immaterial, 
199. 


Continuity,  not  accounted  for  by  ex- 
perience, 16 ;  as  a  characteristic  of 
real  space  and  of  mathematical  space, 
237-240;  to  be  distinguished  from 
the  mathematical  concept,  238. 

Cosmology,  as  one  of  the  types  into 
which  problems  of  metaphysics  are 
divided,  xxi-xxii. 

Creighton,  J.  E.,  article  on  "The  No- 
tion of  the  Implicit  in  Logic,"  cited, 
271  n. 


Degradation  of  energy,  law  of,  48-49. 

Democritus,  atomic  theory  of,  20. 

Descartes,  on  primary  and  secondary 
qualities,  85  ;  criterion  of  truth,  320- 
321. 

Development,  differentiation  of  ideals 
from  point  of  view  of,  313. 

Dewey,  John,  on  the  creative  contri- 
bution of  the  cognitive  relation,  98 
n. ;  theory  concerning  consciousness, 
119-120. 

Differentiation  of  ideals,  309-316. 

Dimensionality,  as  a  property  of  real 
space  and  of  geometric  space,  236. 

Direction,  derivation  of  meaning  of  evo- 
lution from  conception  of,  350 ;  recog- 
nition of,  necessary  to  solution  of 
the  problem  of  the  one  and  the 
many,  355 ;  attribute  of,  gives  mean- 
ing to  conception  of  immortality  as 
the  persistence  of  individual  unity, 
356.  See  also  Form. 

Distance,  as  a  characteristic  of  space, 
397-398. 

Distribution  of  consciousness,  141-145. 

Driesch,  "Philosophy  of  the  Organ- 
ism," quoted,  364-365. 

Dual  nature  of  the  self,  155-163. 

Dunlap,  quoted  on  time  and  the  spe- 
cious present,  257. 

Duration,  psychological  sense  of,  256. 

Durkheim,  social  variables,  43. 

E 

Ebbinghaus,  dual  nature  of  the  self, 
155-156  ;  reference  to,  179. 

Electrical  energy  system,  postulates  of 
an,  38-40. 

Electrical  theory  of  matter,  22-23. 

Emerson,  references  to,  349,  384. 

Emotions,  largely  sensational,  167. 

Empirical  laws  of  energy,  47-51. 

End  terms  in  the  interest  relation,  the 
prejudice  against,  161-163. 


INDEX 


407 


Energy,  as  one  door  to  reality,  3-4,  11 ; 
and  things,  15  ff. ;  discussion  of  na- 
ture of,  33-37 ;  postulates  of  differ- 
ent types  of  systems  of,  37-46  ;  some 
empirical  laws  of,  47-51 ;  relation  of 
systems  of,  to  one  another,  51-61 ; 
theory  of  consciousness  as  a  form  of, 
115;  necessity  of  adding  conscious- 
ness when  trying  to  define  it  in  terms 
of,  118-119  ;  consciousness  and,  147- 
148 ;  problem  of  immortality  relates 
to,  rather  than  to  consciousness,  149  ; 
spatial  distance  implied  by,  226-227  ; 
discussed  as  one  of  the  five  attributes, 
385 ;  insisted  upon  as  an  attribute 
by  modern  science,  389. 

Energy  system,  concept  of,  substituted 
for  concept  of  causality,  103—105. 

Energy  systems,  postulates  of,  37-46 ; 
relation  of,  to  one  another,  51-61. 

Entelechies,  office  of,  in  accounting  for 
prospective  value  of  the  parts  of  the 
protoplasm,  365. 

Ethical  realization,  form  and,  344-350. 

Everett,  C.  C.,  on  the  problem  of  iden- 
tification of  the  ideals,  308-309. 

Evolution,  and  direction,  350-355; 
theories  of,  360  ff . ;  attitude  of  mech- 
anism, 360-362  ;  viewpoint  of  final- 
ism,  362-365;  theory  of  vitalism, 
365-368 ;  a  new  teleology  suggested, 
368-378 ;  final  theory  must  include 
both  mechanism  and  finalism,  370 ; 
function  of  matter  in  process  of,  379- 
381. 

Existence  of  space,  proofs  of,  226-234. 

Experience,  metaphysics  a  final  evalua- 
tion of,  xv ;  insufficiency  of,  as  an 
account  of  reality ,  15-20 ;  its  own  con- 
tinuity not  accounted  for  by,  16  ;  in- 
terest not  accounted  for  by,  17  ;  other 
ways  of  proving  insufficiency  of,  17- 
20;  bearing  of,  on  the  future,  298- 
299 ;  necessary  to  idealization,  309. 

Extension,  place  of,  in  scientific  con- 
ception of  physical  nature,  21 ;  as  a 
property  of  things  in  a  perceptual  en- 
ergy system,  36 ;  not  an  independent 
attribute,  387. 

Externality,  law  of,  210 ;  as  a  property 
of  real  space  and  of  geometric  space, 
235 ;  of  energetic  centers  as  a  char- 
acteristic of  space,  397-398. 

F 

Fechner,  on  life,  42 ;  on  consciousness 
in  plants,  144. 


Feelings,  implied  by  consciousness,  142 ; 
largely  physical  in  character,  167- 
168 ;  constancy  and  change  in,  175- 
178. 

Fichte,  quoted  concerning  geometric 
space,  223 ;  on  form,  337. 

Finalism,  view  of,  regarding  evolution, 
362-365 ;  mechanism  and,  included 
in  final  theory  of  evolution,  370. 

Fine,  on  continuity,  238. 

Form,  the  divine  truth  of,  9-11 ;  and 
reality,  307  ff . ;  and  the  Ought,  326 
ff . ;  the  nature  of,  326-338 ;  validity 
and,  338-344;  and  ethical  reali- 
zation, 344-350 ;  evolution  and  direc- 
tion, 350-355;  question  as  to  how 
forms  preexist  and  what  forms  are 
presupposed,  377-378  ;  the  effective- 
ness of,  378 ;  consideration  of,  as 
one  of  the  five  attributes,  385,  401- 
403. 

Freedom,  accounting  for,  in  analysis  of 
mental  processes,  185-188. 

Freudian  school,  balked  disposition, 
187. 

Fusion,  law  of,  210. 

Future,  knowledge  of  the,  296-303. 


G 

Geometric  space,  psychological  space 
and,  207-224. 

Geometry,  properties  of  real  space  dis- 
tinguished from  those  of,  235-243 ; 
viewed  as  the  idealizing  process  in 
the  abstract,  375. 

God,  the  philosopher's  conception  of, 
325 ;  matter  and,  378-384. 

Gotch,  on  relation  of  nervous  and  elec- 
trical types  of  energy,  55. 

Greek  view  of  identity  of  the  ideals, 
308. 

Green,  reality  denied  to  things  as  con- 
trasted with  values  by,  110. 


Harmony  in  ideals,  317-318. 

Hegel,  logic  of,  xvi ;  values  of  things, 

110;  mentioned,  120;  on  history,  281, 

337;  spatializing  of  spirit,  380. 
Henderson,  cited,  56,  381. 
Heraclitus,    adaptation   from,  53  ;   on 

form,  332, 333  ;  quoted,  349,  351,  359. 
Hildebrand,  on  art,  320. 
History,  justification  and  practical  aim 

of,  294-295. 
Holt,  cited,  96  n. ;  quoted,  161,  162. 


408 


INDEX 


Homogeneity,  as  a  characteristic  of  rea 

space  and  of  geometric  space,  236- 

237. 
Homoloidal  character  of  real  space 

237. 
Hume,  David,  on  causality,  102-103 

"Treatise  on  Human  Nature,"  cited, 

159. 


Idealism,  loss  of  significance  to  space 
when  translated  into  terms  of  abso- 
lute, 223-224;  attempt  of,  to  rule 
out  existence  of  space,  247 ;  teleo- 
logical,  360  ff. 

Idealistic  systems  of  philosophy,  ad- 
vantages of,  xix-xxi. 

Ideality  of  space,  208. 

Ideals,  identity  of  the,  307  ff . ;  efforts 
toward  unification  of,  307-309 ;  ef- 
forts at  differentiation  of,  309-316; 
unity,  harmony,  simplicity,  and  uni- 
versality the  four  essentials  of,  316- 
321 ;  the  content  of,  321-325. 

Identity,  of  the  self,  175-180;  con- 
sciousness of,  in  the  group  mind,  202- 
203  ;  of  the  ideals,  307-325. 

Images,  social  aspects  of,  146-147. 

Immortality,  question  of  consciousness 
and,  149 ;  effect  of  the  craving  for, 
on  the  will,  190 ;  of  social  minds, 
204 ;  meaning  given  to  conception 
of,  by  assuming  attribute  of  direc- 
tion, 356. 

Impenetrability,  as  a  property  of  Par- 
menides'  world,  244. 

Individual  and  social  minds,  191-204. 

Individuation  of  things,  69-73. 

Inertia,  a  universal  characteristic  of 
energy,  35. 

Infinity,  as  a  characteristic  of  real  space 
and  of  geometric  space,  240-241. 

Instinctive  tendencies,  difference  made 
to,  by  consciousness,  138. 

Interaction  theory  of  consciousness, 
128-129. 

Interest,  insufficiency  of  experience  to 
account  for,  17 ;  contrasted  with 
consciousness,  137  ;  consciousness  an 
aspect  of  the  situation  called,  400. 

Interest  relations,  105-106. 

Interpenetration,  a  fundamental  law 
of  the  thing,  83-84. 

Intuition,  mode  of,  applied  to  estimate 
of  qualities,  84  ;  dependence  of  ge- 
ometry upon,  for  its  starting  point, 
215-217. 


James,  William,  on  self-sufficiency  of 
experience  as  an  account  of  reality, 
15 ;  essays  by,  cited,  96  n. ;  view  of 
mental  processes  expressed  by,  130 ; 
account  of  Fechner  by,  quoted,  144  ; 
quoted  in  connection  with  the  dual 
nature  of  the  self,  156 ;  on  the  sub- 
ject-object relation,  160,  161 ;  on  the 
basis  of  the  consciousness  of  mental 
activity,  170-171 ;  cited,  187. 

Judging  process,  time  and  the,  273-282. 


Kant,  Immanuel,  rise  of  hypothesis  of 
absolute  idealism  from  doctrine  of, 
27-28;  space  concept  of,  208  ff . ; 
on  the  existence  of  empty  space,  228 ; 
arguments  of,  against  space  concept, 
245-247;  on  the  character  of  time, 
265 ;  categorical  imperative,  335, 336. 

Kapp,  Gisbert,  "Electricity,"  cited,  22. 

Knowing  minds,  methods  to  be  pur- 
sued, 151-153  ;  the  theory  of  analogy, 
153;  the  mystical  theory,  153-155; 
the  traditional  psychological  theory 
of  the  dual  nature  of  the  self,  155- 
163;  what  is  meant  by  mind,  164 
ff . ;  question  whether  consciousness 
is  mental,  164-166 ;  physical  char- 
acter of  sense  data,  sensory  elements, 
mental  operations,  and  feelings,  166- 
168;  difficulty  of  distinguishing  the 
affective  qualities,  168-169 ;  physical 
nature  of  thought  in  its  content  as- 
pect, 169-170 ;  physical  factors  in 
attention,  170-171 ;  character  of 
mind  disclosed  by  mental  acts  as 
will,  171-172;  the  will  the  mental 
part  of  the  mind,  173-174;  the 
identity  of  the  self,  175-180 ;  unity 
of  the  self,  180-184  ;  place  of  activity 
and  freedom,  185-188 ;  value  and 
worth  of  conduct  as  explained  by  dy- 
namic theory  of  the  self,  188-190. 

Knowledge,  consciousness  and,  147 ;  re- 
lation of  time  to,  268. 


and  Woodworth,  "Elements  of 
Physiological  Psychology,"  quoted, 
212. 

language,  substitution  of,  for  concrete 
situations  for  knowing  minds,  154- 
155. 


INDEX 


409 


Larmor,  Sir  Joseph,  quoted  on  ener- 
getic system,  42. 

Leibniz,  relational  aspect  of  space  em- 
phasized by,  207  ;  confusion  of  form 
with  activity  by,  330. 

Life,  postulates  of  such  an  energy  sys- 
tem as,  40-42. 

Locke,  on  primary  qualities,  85-87. 

Logic,  implied  by  metaphysics,  xv; 
geometrical  construction  a  matter 
of,  220-221. 

Logical  relations,  100 ;  logical  systems, 
106,  107. 

Lotze,  conception  of  the  universe  as  a 
polyphonic  unity  by,  63 ;  on  the 
kinship  of  the  ideals,  308. 

Lovejoy,  A.  O.,  articles  on  "The 
Problem  of  Time  in  Present  French 
Philosophy"  by,  259  n. 


M 

MacDougall,  Robert,  quoted  on  the 
psychological  present,  256. 

McGilvary,  E.  B.,  cited,  119;  view  of 
consciousness  as  "a  unique  together- 
ness," 121  n. 

Maps,  space,  211. 

Marshall,  use  of  term  "  subattentive " 
advocated  by,  392. 

Material  and  immaterial  continuities, 
199. 

Mathematics,  space  considered  from 
aspect  of,  207,  215-224. 

Matter  and  God,  378-384. 

Maxwell,  Clerk,  the  "sorting  omnis- 
cience" of,  49,  367,  381,  383  ;  quoted 
on  homogeneity  of  geometric  space 
and  real  space,  237. 

Mead,  G.  H.,  "Definition  of  the  Psy- 
chical," cited,  120  n. 

Meaning,  relation  of  consciousness  to, 
121-123. 

Mechanical  energy  system,  postulates 
of  a,  37-38. 

Mechanism,  hypothesis  of,  regarding 
evolution,  360-362;  limitations  of, 
369-370 ;  both  finalism  and,  included 
in  final  theory  of  evolution.  370. 

Mendel's  law,  persistence  of  qualities 
shown  by,  81-82 ;  of  types,  374. 

Mental  act,  consciousness  as  a,  164-166. 

Mental  activities,  relation  between 
physical  energy  and,  393. 

Mental  and  physical  continuities  of 
minds,  191-192. 

Mental  processes,  viewed  as  quanti- 
tatively comparable,  116;  two  con- 


ceptions of  existence  of,  when  we  are 
not  conscious  of  them,  130;  partly 
physical  character  of,  167. 

Metaphysics,  meaning  of,  xiii  ff . ;  place 
of,  xiii-xv;  permanent  claim  of,  on 
human  nature,  xv ;  presuppositions 
of,  xv-xvii ;  function  of,  xvii-xx ; 
relation  between  art  and,  xx-xxi ; 
is  science,  not  art,  xxi ;  problems  of, 
customarily  divided  into  ontology 
and  cosmology,  xxi-xxii ;  division  of 
problems  of,  upon  concepts  of  en- 
ergy, consciousness,  space,  time,  and 
form,  xxii. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  quoted  on  constancy  in  a 
series  of  feelings,  177;  question  of, 
as  to  how  past  and  future  can  co- 
exist in  the  present,  255. 

Mind,  the  reality  of,  4 ;  consciousness 
and,  115  ff. 

Minds,  knowing,  151-163 ;  individual 
and  social,  191-204. 

Mind  stuff,  consciousness  and,  129- 
133. 

Minot,  C.  S.f  quoted  concerning  con- 
sciousness, 115;  cited,  127. 

Mobility,  free,  as  a  characteristic  of 
space,  397. 

Montague,  W.  P.,  quoted  on  conscious- 
ness, 122  n. 

Moore,  A.  W.,  "Pragmatism  and  its 
Critics,"  cited,  120  n. 

Moore,  G.  E.,  on  consciousness  as  a 
mental  fact,  164-165. 

More,  L.  T.,  quoted  concerning  space, 
227. 

Motion,  usefulness  of  conception  of 
pure  space  in  explaining,  229-232 ; 
concept  of,  under  a  timeless  system, 
251-252;  accepted  as  a  universal 
property  of  matter,  254-255. 

Motor  sensations,  identification  of 
consciousness  with,  119-120. 

Munsterberg,  Hugo,  cited  concerning 
contrast  between  mental  and  physi- 
cal facts,  192. 

Mystical  theory  of  knowledge  of  other 
minds,  153-154. 


N 


Natural  science,  the  three  attributes 
required  for,  389. 

Nature,  insufficiency  of  experience  to 
account  for,  18-19. 

Neutralism,  theory  of,  regarding  re- 
lations and  things,  95-99. 


410 


INDEX 


Newcomb,  Simon,  article  on  "Matter," 
quoted,  27  ;  article  "Space,"  quoted, 
236-237. 

New  realism,  movement  called,  96. 

Newton,  Isaac,  controversy  with  Leib- 
niz over  space  concept,  207 ;  influ- 
ence of  theories  of,  on  the  space  con- 
cept, 229,  245. 


Objections  to  real  space,  243-247. 

Objective  distance,  possibility  of,  re- 
sulting from  conception  of  pure  space, 
230-232. 

Obscurantism,  metaphysics  confused 
with,  xiii. 

Occultism,  metaphysics  and,  xiii. 

One  and  the  many,  problem  of  the,  355- 
356. 

Ontology,  as  one  of  the  types  into 
which  problems  of  metaphysics  are 
divided,  xxi-xxii. 

Organic  energy  system,  postulates  of 
an,  40-42. 

Ostwald,  "Principles  of  Inorganic 
Chemistry,"  quoted,  81 ;  conscious- 
ness treated  as  a  form  of  energy  by, 
115-116. 

Ought,  form  and  the,  236  ff. ;  denned 
as  the  consciousness  of  the  form- 
character  of  the  universe,  356;  ob- 
jectivity of  the,  357 ;  the  only  way 
of  serving  the,  359. 


Palmer,  reference  to,  312. 

Parmenides,  objections  of,  to  real  space 
concept,  226,  243-244. 

Past,  regarded  as  a  fourth  dimension 
of  time,  286-288 ;  knowledge  of  the 
present  and  the,  contrasted,  289-296. 

Past  and  future,  concept  of,  under  a 
timeless  system,  252. 

Pearson,  Karl,  attempt  of,  to  reduce 
mass  to  acceleration,  390. 

Peirce,  C.  S.,  view  of  matter  by,  372. 

Perception,  consciousness  and,  147. 

Perry,  R.  B.,  "Present  Philosophical 
Tendencies,"  cited,  96  n. ;  "Con- 
ceptions and  Misconceptions  of 
Consciousness,"  cited,  121. 

Philosophy,  what  constitutes,  xiii ;  new 
opportunity  of,  under  present-day 
conditions,  xv. 

Physical  energy,  relation  between  men- 
tal activities  and,  393. 


Physical  properties  of  real  space,  242. 

Physiology  and  psychology,  211-213. 

Pillsbury,  "Essentials  of  Psychology," 
quoted,  212. 

Pitkin,  W.  B.,  summary  of  Sumner'a 
researches,  213. 

Plant  life,  evidences  of  consciousness 
in,  144. 

Plato,  quoted  on  the  contrast  between 
the  present  and  the  past,  289  ;  identi- 
fication of  the  ideals  by,  308 ;  form 
confused  with  concept  of  activity 
by,  329 ;  quoted  concerning  the 
materialistic  view  of  reality,  339 ; 
view  of  finalism  regarding  evolution 
according  to,  362-363;  forms,  377. 

Poincare,  H.,  "The  Value  of  Science," 
quoted,  xx,  23 ;  cited  and  quoted 
in  connection  with  geometric  space, 
215  ff . ;  "Science  and  Hypothesis," 
quoted,  234,  235;  quoted  on  the 
metaphysical  continuum,  238-239. 

Postulates  of  energy  systems,  37-46. 

Pragmatic  character  of  time,  264-273. 

Pragmatic  difference  of  consciousness, 
135-141. 

Pragmatic  view  of  things,  68,  69-73. 

Present,  time  and  the  concept  of  the 
psychological  or  "specious,"  255- 
260 ;  and  past  contrasted,  289-296. 

Presuppositions  of  metaphysics,  xv- 
xvii. 

Properties  of  space,  234-243. 

Psychological  space,  207,  208-215. 


Qualities,  knowing  things  by  their,  74 
ff . ;  viewed  as  energies  that  can  be 
tapped  under  definite  conditions,  75 ; 
the  potential  as  well  as  the  actual 
energies  of  things,  75 ;  things  possess 
different,  in  different  contexts,  76 ; 
identification  of  a  thing  with  its,  76- 
77 ;  what  must  be  included  in  a 
thing's,  77 ;  not  created  by  human 
nature,  77-78 ;  reality  and  persist- 
ence of,  80-82 ;  problem  of  relative 
importance  of,  84-89 ;  importance 
of,  decided  by  the  purpose  in  ques- 
tion, 89 ;  avoidance  of  confusion  of 
sensations  and  sense  qualities,  89- 
91;  of  values,  108-112. 

Quantity,  mental  processes  measurable 
as  to,  116-117;  space  and  time  as 
pure,  389-390;  attempt  to  reduce 
mass  and  energy  to  pure,  390. 


INDEX 


411 


Rankine,  summary  of  views  of,  on 
energy,  36-37. 

Reality,  doors  to,  found  in  being  or 
energies,  time,  space,  consciousness 
and  form,  3-11 ;  insufficiency  of  ex- 
perience as  an  account  of,  15-20 
application  of  hypotheses  of  sub- 
stances and  of  the  absolute,  20  ff. 
an  energy  system  the  simplest  unit 
of,  35-36 ;  as  a  property  of  energy 
systems,  52  ff. ;  of  things,  62-73 ; 
question  of  kind  to  be  assigned  to 
consciousness,  115;  in  what  way  en- 
riched by  consciousness,  135-141 ; 
time  and,  251  ff . ;  form  and,  307  ff. 

Real  space,  nature  of,  225-247. 

Reid,  Thomas,  quoted  on  primary  and 
secondary  qualities,  84. 

Relational  theory  of  space,  207  ff. 

Relations,  things  and,  92  ff . ;  space, 
time,  causal,  and  logical  relations, 
100 ;  of  interest,  105-106. 

Relativity,  a  fundamental  characteris- 
tic of  energy  systems,  35-36,  50-51. 

Religion,  requirements  of,  357. 

Rhythm,  a  characteristic  of  energy, 
49-50. 

Richards,  T.  W.,  on  the  compressi- 
bility of  atoms,  229. 

Royce,  Josiah,  "  The  Problem  of  Chris- 
tianity," cited,  28 ;  solution  of  prob- 
lem of  relations  offered  by,  94 ; 
quoted  concerning  time,  272. 

Runeberg,  Swedish  poet,  on  relation 
between  art  and  nature,  112. 

Russell,  Bertrand,  works  by,  cited  and 
quoted,  96  n.,  170,  228,  246. 


Santayana,  George,  on  consciousness 
and  process,  140  n. ;  "Winds  of 
Doctrine,"  quoted,  327-328. 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  emphasis  placed  on 
creative  contribution  of  the  cogni- 
tive relation  by,  98  n. 

Schiller,  poet,  reference  to,  308. 

Schopenhauer,  on  will,  172. 

Science,  and  the  attributes,  389-390. 

Self-realization,  fallacy  of  doctrine  of, 
346-348. 

Sensations,  distinction  between  sense 
qualities  and,  89-91. 

Sensory  elements,  physical  nature  of, 
166-167. 

Series  aspect  of  space,  is  ideal  construc- 
tion, 215-216. 


Shaftesbury,  on  the  kinship  of  the 
ideals,  308. 

Sheldon,  W.  H.,  articles  on  "A  Theory 
of  Causation"  by,  cited,  103. 

Simplicity  demanded  by  ideal  activity, 
318-319. 

Social  experience  as  a  test  of  objectivity 
of  things,  72. 

Social  interactions,  postulates  of,  as  a 
type  of  energy  system,  42-44. 

Social  minds,  individual  and,  191-204. 

Socrates,  references  to,  333,  349. 

Soddy,  quoted,  242. 

Space,  the  divine  truth  of,  6-7 ;  psy- 
chological, 208-215 ;  geometric,  215- 
224 ;  nature  of  real  space,  225  ff.  ; 
proofs  of  existence  of,  226-234  ;  prop- 
erties of,  234-243;  objections  to 
real,  243-247 ;  discussed  as  one  of  the 
five  attributes,  385,  397-398;  in- 
sisted upon  as  an  attribute  by  mod- 
ern science,  389. 

Space  relations,  100. 

Space  zero,  conception  of  a,  226,  397. 

Specious  present,  time  and  the,  255-260. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  antinomy  of  extension 
and  force,  21;  adjustment,  41,  348. 

Spinoza,  vision  of  universe  held  by,  4 ; 
confusion  of  form  with  activity  by, 
330 ;  conception  of  the  attributes 
of,  386-389. 

Stout,  G.  F.,  definition  of  "mental" 
and  "mind,"  164;  cited,  166. 

Strutt,  R.  J.,  exposition  of  electrical 
theory  of  matter  by,  23  n. 

Stumpf,  reference  to,  166. 

Stuff,  as  one  of  the  five  attributes, 
385.  See  Energy. 

Subattentive,  suggested  use  of,  392. 

•Jubconsciousness,  accounting  for  men- 
tal processes  by,  187. 

Subjective  idealism,  theory  of,  re- 
garding mental  processes,  130-132. 

Subjectivity  of  consciousness,  146-147. 

Subject-object  relation,  155-163. 

Substance,  the  conception  of,  385. 

Substances,  hypothesis  of,  20-27. 

Succession,  limitation  of  consciousness 
of,  260. 

Sumner,  Francis  B.,  researches  by,  213. 

Systems,  see  energetic,  logical,  geo- 
metric. 


Teleological  idealism,  360  ff. 
Teleology,  a  new,  suggested,  368-378. 
Temporal  and  the  eternal,  261-264. 


412 


INDEX 


Things,  question  of  existence  of,  62  ff. 
causes  of  the  present-day  antipathy 
to,  62-69  ;  pragmatic  significance  of, 
69-73  ;  pragmatic  view  of,  74  ;  find- 
ing reality  of,  by  their  qualities,  74- 
83  ;  interpenetration  a  fundamental 
law  of,  83-84 ;  problem  of  relations 
and,  92-107;  and  values,  107-112; 
survival  of,  may  be  conditioned  by 
values,  111. 

Thomson,  J.  J.,  "Electricity  and  Mat- 
ter," quoted,  22. 

Thought,  physical  aspect  of,  169-170 ; 
effect  on  friendship,  193-194;  light 
thrown  on  nature  of,  by  geometry, 
219-220. 

Time,  the  divine  truth  of,  5-6;  the 
nature  of,  251  ff . ;  concepts  of 
motion,  causality,  attention,  ac- 
tivity, etc.,  under  a  timeless  system, 
251-252 ;  absence  of  meaning  and 
judgments  under  timeless  system, 
253  ;  and  the  psychological  present, 
255-260;  the  temporal  and  the 
eternal,  261-264 ;  pragmatic  char- 
acter of,  264-273 ;  and  the  judging 
process,  273-282;  to  be  regarded 
as  non-serial,  283  ;  and  the  problem- 
atic, 283  ff . ;  as  a  new  dimension, 
286-288;  knowledge  of  the  future, 
296-303;  as  one  of  the  five  attri- 
butes, 385;  insisted  upon  as  an  at- 
tribute by  modern  science,  389; 
discussed  as  an  attribute,  394-397. 

Time  relations,  100. 

Titchener,  E.  B.,  "A  Textbook  of 
Psychology,"  cited,  139. 

Transformation  of  values  effected  by 
time,  394-397. 


U 


Unification  of  ideals,  307-309. 

Unit  characters  in  Mendel's  law,  81-82. 

Unity,  of  the  self,  180-184;  type  of, 
which  dominates  social  minds,  203  ; 
in  ideals,  316-317. 

Universality,  the  law  of,  an  abstrac- 
tion, 267 ;  demanded  by  ideal  ac- 
tivity, 319-320. 


Universe,    not   dependent   upon    con- 
sciousness, 148. 


Validity  and  form,  338-344,  401-403. 

Value,  of  conduct  as  explained  by  dy- 
namic theory  of  the  self,  188-190 ;  at- 
tempt to  identify  the  types  of,  309. 

Values,  things  and,  107-112  ;  how  sur- 
vival of  things  may  depend  upon, 
111;  relation  of  consciousness  to, 
136-139 ;  consciousness  cannot  de- 
cide between,  140-141. 

Vitalism,  view  of,  regarding  evolution, 
365-368. 

W 

Walter,  H.  E.,  "Genetics,"  quoted,  81. 

Whitehead,  quoted  on  fundamental 
concepts  in  mathematics,  207,  215, 
221-222. 

Wikner,  Pontus,  monograph  by,  cited, 
74. 

Will,  viewed  as  measurable  as  to  quan- 
tity, 117;  character  of  mind  disr 
closed  by  mental  acts  as,  171 ;  de- 
pendence of,  upon  physical  instru- 
ments, 172  ;  the  modes  of  the,  173  ; 
is  the  mental  part  of  what  is  called 
"mind,"  173-174. 

Wilson,  E.  B.,  cited,  83. 

Woodbridge,  F.  J.  E.,  quoted  concern- 
ing consciousness,  121. 

Work  as  a  measure  of  energy,  34. 

Worth,  of  conduct,  explained  by  dy- 
namic theory  of  self,  188 ;  of  social 
minds,  203. 

Wundt,  quoted  on  dual  nature  of  the 
self,  155. 


Zeller,  "Aristotle,"  quoted,  363. 
Zeno,  conception  of  space  by,  as  "no 

thing,"  225 ;    objections  of,  against 

Pythagorean    conception    of    space, 

244. 
Zero,  property  of  absolute,  a  property 

of  cosmic  space,  242-243. 
Zero   space,   as  a  limit  in  conceiving 

Newton's  first  law  of  motion,  229. 


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